Laika Pupkino
There was never any love lost between me and my sister. We fought constantly as kids, and now as adults we still drove each other---and everyone around us---crazy. When our spell-slinging grandmother decided to teach us a lesson by body swapping us, our bitter feuding soon led us to a grotesque new form of combat, which before it was all over would get crazy indeed...
"You are gonna have SUCH a headache tomorrow!" laughed my sister as he started banging his head against the wall, grunting with each impact, putting a row of jagged craters into the plaster.
Smashing the nearly empty whiskey bottle across the end of the table, I raised it toward my cheek, tittering, "Gee, it's a shame what happened to your pretty face-"
We should have listened to Grandma. Terrible things can happen when you don't...
.
||| FRIDAY OCTOBER 3, 2008 ~~~
I killed the engine and sat staring at the chemical New Jersey sunset. Unlatched my seatbelt, pried my sweaty back free of the seat fabric. Unless you count my few hurried jots to a restroom or the time I spent idling in the drive-thru line at the Kentucky Fried Chicken, I had been driving nonstop since well before dawn.
She must have heard me pulling up into the drive. Was out on the front porch, holding the screen door open with her back. She waved.
I got out, hefted my suitcase out of the trunk and dragged it up the wooden steps, "Got here as soon as I could."
"I guess so," she smiled, opening her arms, "A hug for your grandma?"
"I'm really dirty. I stink," I warned her.
"I'll survive. I just need a hug right now."
We hugged. I could sense her worry, her tiredness. I asked, "So how is he?"
"They're not saying, except that it's serious. I think once they've figured out what he has they'll be able to tell us more about his chances."
"Chances," I said. Not a word you want to hear in connection with your father, even if he is a world-class bastard. "But what do you mean 'figure it out'? I thought they said it was a heart attack."
"That was me, sorry. I was just guessing. His blood pressure, our family history. He was back in the freezer rotating the cases of veal cutlets when he keeled over. But they said his heart is fine. He's running a high fever, all the signs of a major infection but they can't figure where it is."
"They'll find it. I mean with all the diagnostic equipment they have nowadays."
"God, I hope so! I'd ask you to pray for him if it wouldn't offend your modern sensibilities."
I grimaced in apology, "If I did would just be pretending something. Like I was talking to your 'invisible friend' just to humor you. I don't think you'd want that."
Grandma turned, led me into the house, nodding, "You're right Teodoro, I wouldn't. And I don't hold it against you. I just .......... I think it's sad. There's a big important part of the universe you're missing."
Anyone else, I would have been offended, the condescension of that kind of pity, but she's one of the decent ones. Selfless and non-judgemental, with a gift for looking on the bright side that I wish I had. So when she quotes Kahlil Gibroni or whoever it carries more weight than if some sanctimonious jerk did it.
Her white hair stood out jarringly against her bright fuchsia sweats. Looking down at the back of her head I saw that it had gotten thinner, far thinner than any woman's hair should be. And she seemed a lot smaller now. Where do people go when they get old? And how old was she? I've always been lousy with ages and birthdays, but if Dad was (I was pretty sure) fifty-six, and with what she'd mentioned about "seeing the world" for a number of between college and coming home to marry Grandpa, then she had to be in her early eighties. And yet it was good to see that there was still a healthy spring in her step.
"It's great to see you Grandma Rosa."
"You too. You know you're always welcome here. How was your flight?"
"I drove. That's what took me so long."
"Of course. I guess a big truck with plates that say POOLGUY wouldn't be a rental. You'll have to excuse me, it's all synapses up here any more," she chuckled as she tapped her temple, then looked around crowing in a weak, befuddled voice, "Ehhhh? Where's Poppa? Where's Poppa?!"
I recognized the film she was quoting, a macabre comedy about an old senile woman who caused all kinds of trouble. I laughed, "That'll be the day!"
The parlor was cleaner than dad had ever kept it. The furniture shone and smelled of polish and the bulbs in the chandelier sparkled. I guess her moving in with Dad last year had been a good thing. And maybe seeing his old Ma risking her neck up on a chair had made him get up and help once in a while. Maybe. He busted his ass at his restaurant, and our tiny square sloping embankment of a front lawn was his pride and joy; but any of the ordinary upkeep inside the house, if it was up to him to do it, it wouldn't get done. It wasn't his union.
"They have all these tests they still want to run on him," said Grandma, "But if this is something a person can lick, he'll do it. I'll say one thing for that boy of mine, he's a fighter!"
I'm sure my double meaning wasn't lost on her when I said, "He sure is."
I slid back the lid over the piano's keys, and started noodling on it one handed. Smiled.
"Well I didn't see any use of having it if it wasn't in tune," she shrugged, "It'll be good to hear you play. How long will you be able to stay for?"
My one handed exercise settled into something, a march of sorts, "I was surprised. I apparently had a lot of unused vacation time. And the timing of this---I mean if it had to happen---was perfect; with us starting into the slow season. So I took it all. Four weeks."
"That's good. Since your father's condition ....... Let's just hope he's home before then, and you can spend some time around here with him."
"That would be nice," I lied. Unless he was a total invalid I intended to head to Vegas as soon as I could after he was released from the hospital. Or (after we'd tied up the most serious loose ends his dying would leave...) after his funeral.
Grandma Rosa's lips were moving. Chanting under her breath. Her "mantra", which I remember from our last visit. Om Nama Sheevi-aye. I stopped playing."You still seeing that guru?"
"No, Sri Hathaway and I parted company amicably. He understood that I needed to get back more into my Witching Arts. Although I'm sure to you that's even more foolish. You hungry? Let's adjourn to the kitchen. The party is in there, if you can call it that."
Of course she would want me to eat. I learned long ago to at least let her put a plate down in front of me. She turned, toward the drawing room's doorless portal, that somehow Moorish arch-with-a-notch-in-the-center shape you find in these century-old homes. "It's this way."
"I grew up in this house. I think I remember."
"Of course. Then again, it has been almost a decade."
"Six years," I corrected her. "Mom's funeral."
"Oh right. Poor Elizabeth. Such a sad day. And so unexpected."
"I know," I said softly.
I suppose it's a bit of a cliché, the Italian guy going on about what a saint his mother was, so I will try not to overdo it. But Mom was so darn smart and funny and full of life; a wellspring of positivism that had been dropped unexpectedly into the middle of the Farranino clan- a clan that (excepting Grandma) generally came off as a bunch of resentful pessimists. My mother's mere presence seemed to improve things. Her "vibes" to use a Grandma-ism.
I always wondered how Dad and Grandpa and the rest of them didn't wear Mom's good spirits down, but now it seems maybe they did. Hidden stresses leading to that aneurysm in her brain, which announced its presence by suddenly killing her. She had acted as a needed counterforce to a lot of what was wrong with this family, and it was really hard losing her. And so now with Dad afflicted with ........... whatever this is...
Fifty-six is just too damn young! I wished like hell there was some kind of diagnosis. I wanted to be told how worried I should be. What to be worried about.
Entering the kitchen, I sniffed. Who the hell is smoking? Oh God...
"Hello Teddy."
"Oh Joy," I groaned.
"Ha ha. Never heard that one before," Joy said flatly.
I asked Grandma, "Could we get that other fan on in here?"
Joy gave me a dirty look, "Oh like my smoke really bothers you!"
"Of course you would think everything that anyone says is about you. I was talking about for the heat."
"A hundred in October. I'd say the science is in," said Grandma cryptically as she plugged in the old cast iron fan's braided cloth cord. It stuttered noisily to life.
My sister Joy---two years my junior---had gone jet black with her fine straight hair, which was long, a hand's breadth or two from the middle of her back, except for in front where she'd trimmed it into sheepdoggish bangs. She wore a beret and granny glasses, like some kind of cartoon beatnik chick. With that Gaulloise dangling from her lips and her acoustic guitar leaning up against the table all she needed was the black turtleneck sweater. At her age she was a bit old to be dressing up in costumes, but at least she wasn't a goth this time.
"So what are you doing here?" I asked her.
"Why do you think I'm here? Dad's sick!"
I held my hands up, peacemaking. "I just meant ........ I didn't think you'd, uh..."
"Didn't think I would care enough about my own father to come see him?" the scowl she wore added a decade to her thirty-one-year-old face, but it went with the outfit. The tireless crusader, angrily protesting the latest fashionable injustice. Which at the moment was me.
"I was going to say that I didn't think you'd be able to get away from you job," I told her, "But now that you mention it..."
"Oh, and you're supposed to be The Great Son? At least I never assaulted him."
"Assaulted? I pushed him. He was right up in my face, screaming at me! I could feel little drops of spittle landing on me! I mean-"
"Hey, you two! Give your old Granny a break. And sit down, Teodoro."
Though I'd been driving all day I seated myself at the formica table in one of the old chrome and vinyl chairs. Things didn't get replaced around here just for going out of style. Being surrounded by all these ghosts from my childhood filled me with a sense of nostalgia that was alternately comforting and disturbing.
Joy took a last angry hit off her cigarette and ground it out in the candy dish ashtray. Let the smoke out slowly, muttering, "That job at Earthsmart Natural Foods is over with anyway..."
Amazing ........ that's three jobs this year. How did a fannullona like her ever come out of this family? I couldn't help but laugh, "And let me guess ........ You 'just happen' to need a place to stay for a while."
"You are both welcome to stay here," said Grandma Rosa, "I just wish you could-"
Joy's voice rose, "Well excuse me if I'm not a robot like you, Teddy. Same job for fourteen years, wearing your little name tag and clip-on tie. Selling wading pools, for God's sake!"
"They're above ground swimming pools. Five feet is not a wading pool. And what name tag? I'm a distributor, not some retail flunky."
"Whatever ........ I'll admit it, I couldn't do that. I like to try different things."
I laughed nastily, "New and interesting ways to get fired?"
Grandma tried again, "Come on kids. I really don't need this right now!"
She started rummaging through the drawers under the drainboard for something. At the same time Joy was digging through her rat's nest of a purse, no doubt for another cigarette. Jeering, "Are you actually that stupid? Do you really think you have some kind of security because you've been at the same job all that time? They'll downsize you in a heartbeat if they get a mind to. That's the nature of the beast! Then where will you be? Huh?!"
"No place you've ever been, apparently! I'll have a solid resume. I won't have to make up a bunch of shit on my job application. Like where it says: 'Have you ever been convicted of a felony?'"
"That was an ACCIDENT-"
Suddenly a godawful harsh screeching noise filled the kitchen! Grandma had found what she was looking for---Dad's old coach's whistle---and held it was clenched between her teeth, blowing angrily.
She stopped, "Now look you two. I'm not putting up with this! When I called you, and you came here, the idea was that you were supposed to be helping me, not bickering like you were still a couple of ten year olds. 'Gramma! Gramma! He put my Barbie down the garbage disposal!' Well you're not ten years old. And I'm NOT going to put up with it!"
"But he did put my Barbie in the disposal!" whined Joy.
"Well you kept calling me Monkey Face! And I told you to quit it, and then you and your stupid friend Amber started-"
Another angry blast from the whistle! Grandma asked slowly, coldly, "What did I just say? Did you even hear me? I guarantee you, you don't want to piss me off right now."
"Sorry..."
Grandma shut her eyes, took a deep noisy breath in through her nostrils---slowly, slowly---and let it out through her mouth with a sigh, slumping theatrically. She chuckled sadly, "What's ironic about this ridiculous feud of yours is that you aren't all that different than each other. You two have a lot more in common than you think."
"Give me a break!" snorted Joy.
"No, I mean it. You're both hopelessly pig headed. Always have to have the last word, to always be right. Oblivious to the fact that maybe no one else wants to hear it. I mean, my Jojo is in the hospital, for all we know dying, and you can't put this nonsense aside for a few days? For my sake? Do you have any idea what I'm going through? Do you care?"
Jojo?? It was strange to hear the sour and humorless Joe Farranino called anything so cutesy, but I suppose trotting out old forgotten childhood nicknames is a mother's perogative.
She continued down the list of our faults, "You're each in your own way extremely vain, and both damn self-centered. Joy more obviously so than Teodoro, but I swear you have your moments, Teddy! You're both quick to lash out with some hurtful remark, but fall right apart if someone does it to you. But most of all it's your auras ........... If you could see them, you'd be amazed at how similar they are!"
"Oh Christ..."
"Oh Christ what?"
"No-thing," murmured Joy in a singsong voice.
"No, really. I came down pretty harsh on you two just now, so let's hear it."
"Okay then. You were doing fine until you brought up auras. If you want to take people to take you seriously you might want to lay off the New Age bullshit. You're just embarrassing yourself when you do that!"
"What you call 'New Age' isn't new at all. It's a synthesis of all the great teachings from the ages. Are you saying the Bible, the Tao te Ching, the Book of Wicca are all bullshit?"
"I don't know. Maybe not the books. But the way you do it, it's ........ It looks silly. Like how you only wear that pinky purple color. People notice, and they know something weird is up. Like you're in one of those 80's cults."
"This color is a profession of my faith. I've had some great conversations with strangers that I wouldn't have had otherwise. I'm sorry if it embarrasses you to be seen with me."
"It's not that."
"Really? Then what is it? And what about you, Teodoro? Am I just some babbling old Shirley McClaine dingbat?"
"It's your life. What's important is if it makes you happy."
My sister sneered, "He won't give you an honest answer, the suck up!"
"That was an honest answer," I protest.
"Oh yeah? You should hear the things he says about you, Grandma. You want to know the clever name he gave your guru?"
"HUSH!" commanded Grandma, "Good Lord, Joy, you are such a tattletale brat! It's always been one of your least endearing traits..."
When she did the yoga breathing thing again, I used the opportunity to stick my tongue out at Joy. Who returned it, her eyes crossed goofily.
Grandma Rosa said sadly, "It figures that this would be the one thing you can both agree on, something so wrong. I've learned a great deal in my studies, you'd be surprised..."
"Wasted a great deal of money is more like it," sighed Joy.
This comment of my sister's struck me as profoundly telling. I jumped on it- "There, that's it! That is the main difference between me and you. It bugs you, doesn't it? The money."
"I hate to see her giving it to those phonies. It's so stupid, especially since otherwise she's so darn smart. I mean it would be one thing if she was some trailer trash cracker-granny out in the sticks..."
"There are some wise women out in the sticks," said Grandma.
I leaned forward, accusatory, a prosecuting attorney from some bad tv show, "But that's not the real issue, is it Joy? Everything she or Dad do, you think of in terms of how much you're going to inherit some day. So naturally them spending anything on themselves horrifies you-"
"THAT'S A LIE! If you can say that you don't even know me. Just because you're totally materialistic you think everybody else is. How dare you!"
"Materialistic? You go through money faster than I do. It's just that when I spend money I have something to show for it. It doesn't all go up my nose."
"Indoor voices, please!" Grandma pleaded.
"I don't care if they spend their money. I was only talking about her and that-that FAKE in a bedsheet."
"What about the boat dad wanted? Was that Cris-Craft dealer a fake in a bedsheet? You were so worried about how 'expensive' it was; And somehow you managed to talk him out of it."
"I was worried that it wasn't safe! That's the difference between us. You're always, 'Go ahead Dad, go on vacation in Iraq! Bungee jumping? Sure! Break your neck, I always hated you anyway. Here, let me punch your lights out again!'"
"Punched? I was eighteen! And how many fucking times are you gonna bring that up? Yeah, things were pretty bad between me and him then, but I got over most of that. So did he."
"Swept everything under the rug, you mean! But I do one thing wrong, and I'm this evil, evil person!"
"It's called growing up. I suggest you give it a try. I swear you're such an immature bitch sometimes."
"Who you calling a bitch, you yuppie cocksucker?!"
"Well I can see that diplomacy isn't going to get us anywhere," sighed Grandma. She cleared her throat and began to chant, loudly, in a voice that was eerily commanding:
"Call the men in the white coats. Granny's lost it!" whooped Joy, and began laughing deleriously.
Grandma just looked at her. Sternly, but mostly concentrating on the words she spoke:
Joy kept laughing, snorting and snotting, pounding on the table until her coffee sloshed out of the cup. And I guess it was an awfully goofy rhyme. I thought maybe it was some little mindfuck trick that she had learned in her peace activist days, for defusing a confrontative situation. It never even occurred to me that something so nonsensical could be a magic spell. I said, "Come on Nona, a joke's a joke..."
She thrust one clawlike hand toward Joy, one toward me:
There was no flash, or sense of motion, but suddenly Joy was gone and I was sitting across the table from a guy who looked so much like me that I rubbed my eyes, not quite believing this.
Maybe it was all the drugs she had taken---that she is used to reality jumping around on her like this---but Joy caught on to what had happen way before I did. All I knew was this looks-like-me-dressed-like-me guy was staring back at me with his bearded jaw hanging slack. Then he lept up screaming, patting at his clothes, the front of his shirt like he was on fire.
Then he lunged toward my grandma like he was gonna hurt her! "YOU BITCH! PUT US BACK! PUT US BACK! PUT US BACK!!"
It was only when I jumped up to protect Grandma Rosa from this big crazy goon that realized I was in an alien body. My height as I pushed off of the table and stood up, and this large volume of soft fatty tissue protruding from me, shifting inside the brassierre that I seemed to be wearing.
I was relieved to note that my doppelganger had stopped just short of Grandma, seemed content to look down at her, shouting, calling her all kinds of vile names! And since she was clearly holding her own---arms crossed, unimpressed---I was able to take stock of myself, frenziedly performing the same disbelieving stations of the cross that this stranger had just done, oh God oh no, feeling parts of my body, and then my face; which for some reason seemed the most disturbing change of all! Not the comfortable protective mass of my beard but baby-smooth skin, dainty cheeks explored with dainty hands.
"Holy shit!" I squeaked.
The man nodded, grinning toothily at my shock and astonishment; enjoying my predicament if not his own. "Hey, Big Brother."
And then Joy and I were both shouting at once. Demanding, reasoning, begging, whining for her to please goddamn it switch us back! While Grandma just sat there, holding all the cards and grinning from ear to ear, content to let us wind down...
This voice I was speaking in sounded so strange to me. The impulse was to keep clearing my throat, to make it come out "right", but I knew this wasn't going to help. As calmly as I could, I told her: "I'll admit it, I'm amazed. Completely amazed! 'More things on Heaven and Earth' and all that ............ I mean Wow! Magic is real, and we were as wrong as you can get. With our skepticism, the things we always said, we were just proving over and over that WE were the ignorant ones, and you ......... Well you've made your point. Eloquently and, uh- inarguably. This was an incredibly impressive demonstration Grandma ........ I am humbled to realize that I have so much to learn. So now please-"
My grandmother sounded offended, "Do you think I'm doing card tricks here? I wasn't trying to impress you, to prove you wrong. A practitioner who's reached the Silver Wand level doesn't do magic without a better reason than that. And I'm not changing you back right away, so you can save your breath about that. There is an actual purpose to what I did."
Joy stood there, fingers crimped around the point of her beard, "Purpose?"
"You two have been at each other's throats for years. Maybe this is something you enjoy, and I would say more power to you. Have at it! Except it affects this whole family. Like at Uncle Angelo's birthday party."
Remembering that fight in Aunt Vera's kitchen Joy started laughing. It was weird to hear my sister's annoying billygoat laugh coming out in an unfamiliar masculine pitch.
"Oh yeah. Real goddamn funny," snapped Grandma. "Did you ever wonder why that was the last of the Stefano's gatherings this side of the family was ever invited to? Thomasina's confirmation, I missed that thanks to you two slapstick comedians! I love that little girl..."
"I guess we were pretty horrible," I admitted. "And the way we fought in here tonight, it was awful. Thoughtless and rude. I'm so sorry. So how do we make amends? What do we have to do before you'll change us back? Whatever it is, I swear we'll do it."
"Do? There's nothing you really much you need to do. Let's see, it's the Third of October? Well of course- Halloween! Always real easy to cast spells then. So if you could both try to stay alive until midnight of the Thirty-First, that would be helpful. Other than that ........ A month of 'walking in each other's shoes' will either teach you something, give you a little empathy for each other, or it won't."
"And if it doesn't?" asked Joy apprehensively.
"It would be another of life's opportunities you wasted, and not terribly surprising to me. I'll still change you back, you have my word. In the mean time, what I want from you is the same sort of stuff I wanted before I swapped you. Help out around the house here. Help me and your father get through this, whatever he has. Could you do that?"
"Sure Grandma," we both said.
"We'll do what we can. But it might a little harder, might be kind of awkward for us, being like this. Getting adjusted. Learning to be a girl or-" I nodded toward Joy, "a guy. We might be more helpful in our own bodies."
Grandma's laugh told me what she thought of my stratagem, "Oh, I guarantee it will be awkward for you, 'getting adjusted'. And I'm not going to be doing a lot of watching you, guiding you, giving advice. I don't have the energy for it. My time and my efforts are going to be spent on casting a healing spell for your father with some of my Sisters. But each of you has the life experience the other lacks. The sensible thing, Teddy, would be for you and him to tutor each other."
"Him? I'm not a guy. No matter what you did to us!"
"I know that, Dear. But you should get used to using the terms that go with the bodies your in. Mostly for when you're out in public. We call you 'her', looking like you do now, and people are going to think you're transgender."
"Eewwwwwww Gross! Those weirdos!" cried Joy, the teeny-bopperish inflection making her sound and look like a big transgendered girly-man; an incongruity that would have been comical if it wasn't for the bigotry of the sentiment. I happened to know a transsexual woman, and would prefer to have her---Elsa---as a member of my family any day!
So it was not only ignorant of Joy, but she was taking credit for the "virtue" of having developed normally, something that she'd had absolutely no hand in. I had a whole lot of things to tell her about this, but she and I weren't supposed to be arguing. So instead I just said, "That makes sense, Grandma. I'll try to keep that in mind..."
Joy started doing stretching exercises. Twisting her torso- uh, his torso left and right.
"Y'know, this is kind of a trip. Kind of like how peyote makes your body feel, where everything's just a little out of phase from normal. Or, uh, I mean I read that. Look, I can touch the ceiling! Well almost ........... Whoah!" he cried out sharply, and sat down. "I'm dizzy. Are you sure you did your magic right, Grandma?"
"Don't worry. Sudden vertigo can happen in the first hour or so a Class A transcorporation spell. Like you say it is disorienting. Although most people don't enjoy it. I remember when you were three, Joy. You couldn't get enough of me spinning you on the merry-go-round at the playground. Make me dizzy, Grandma! Make me dizzy! Boy, that should've told us something. Oh well, it is what it is..."
"There are classes of spells?" I asked.
"Class A is the simplest. Human-to-human, with a waiting host. There are others, but most ethical practitioners don't mess with them. You risk damaging a human consciousness trying to put it into an animal brain, the risk increasing as the brains get simpler. And human-to-inanimate, people who have been pulled back from one of those are never, ever the same."
"Wow," said Joy, "So you can really do all this Harry Potter shit! Why didn't you ever tell us before?"
"I might have, when you turned thirteen. That's the usual minimum age for both Initiates and Fellow Travellers. But by then you were both proving to be the kind of people that you don't tell about the craft."
This hurt. "You could have confided in me. I wouldn't have told anyone."
"Maybe, Teodoro. Maybe not. I had to go with what I was seeing. And the way you were around your sister ............ You both should've outgrown this a long time ago; learned to accept the fact that you don't see eye to eye on things, to cut each other a little slack. But you're thirty-one and thirty-three and-" she completed the sentence with a tired shake of her head.
Joy frowned,"You could have at least helped me with my acne. I mean if you can do this!"
"Life's adversities---if you can call a few zits an adversity---are supposed to teach us things. It wasn't really your telling someone I was worried about. I was more afraid that if you knew you would be expecting me to wave a magic wand at all your problems. Help me get an A on my history test, Grandma ....... There's this cute boy at school, could you mix me up a love potion?! I could just see it going on and on. And in fact, if I hadn't lost my temper, you wouldn't have ever known."
Joy and I digested this. The low regard she had for our development as human beings. Her utter lack of faith in us...
The clock on the wall said 9:02. Unseen, a car moved slowly down the block, rap music thumping loudly from its open windows. The fans whirred, only putting the barest dent in the heat. Joy must have read my thoughts. He sighed, "I can't believe you don't have AC here!"
"Sorry, no air conditioning. But I can do this-"
She made a gesture like she was tossing a ball up, and suddenly it was snowing in the kitchen. Not hard at all, just like those first few hesitant flakes of a snowstorm. They materialized a few inches below the ceiling and melted as soon as they landed on something. It felt wonderful. And all too soon, it stopped.
"Do it again! Do it again!" we cried.
Grandma shook her head, a firm refusal. Smiled, "Don't worry, this heat wave can't last too much longer. So are you kids hungry? There's some left over meatloaf."
"Now that you mention it, I'm starved," said Joy. He cast me a reproachful look, "Damn, Teddy! Didn't you eat at all today?"
Grandma stuck the meatloaf into the microwave and portioned it onto three plates. It was
excellent. None of us said much as we wolfed it down, each lost in his or her private thoughts...
Eager to start proving myself to Grandma, I washed the few plates and cups we'd used. Reaching for things was weird, I kept misjudging distances, the reach of these shorter arms I now had, the span of these small hands. And with every motion my breast made themselves known. Under my denim blouse, a drop of sweat slid down into my cleavage, startling me. This was going to be a strange month.
Joy and Grandma went upstairs to sleep. When she knew we were coming, Grandma had moved all her stuff into Dad's room and allotted us each one of the smaller bedrooms. I knew the rooms here, I would find out what sort of accomodations mine now had when I turned in. I hoped it wasn't that damned hide-a-bed sofa.
I sat watching television. It figured; This huge fancy hi-def tv and no cable. I knew Dad's reasoning for this, that with running Il Vesuvio he was never home to watch it, but it still sucked! He did have a lot of dvd's, but they all tended to be WWII movies, spaghetti westerns, heist or gangster films and I wasn't in the mood.
Feeling vaguely fidgety, I eased Joy's little wire-rim glasses off my face and inspected them. Just as I was about to find something to clean them with I noticed that they were clear glass. Weird. I'd hated my own glasses enough to have laser surgery done, and I set hers on the table next to me, happy to be rid of them...
Now that the initial shock of my transformation was wearing off, I was becoming very resentful. Even if I had known about her abilities, I would never have guessed that Grandma would do something like this to someone! She called herself an "ethical" witch. Where was the ethics in taking someone's body? Even worse, she had loaned mine to a known drug user. To a person who had totalled three cars, each in an accident that had caused the arresting officers to say, "Damn, I can't believe anyone could survive that!"
But Grandma just went ahead, without permission, on this high-handed mission to teach me something. The way she did it was far worse than the fact that I was suddenly shanghaied into this alien flesh, althought the fact itself was no walk in the park. It all felt physically wrong. Everything I did...
My transsexual neighbor Elsa had printed out a story for me comparing growing up transgendered to always having your left and right shoes on the wrong feet. As moving as this little parable was, it think it was a MAJOR understatement! This was like being sewn into some bizarre unweildy costume! Although I suppose the abruptness of this made it a lot different then her type of gender dilemna.
Intellectually I told myself this shouldn't matter. I'm not some macho motherfucker who would find it inherently dishonorable to be turned female- the notion of "less than a man". It is a slightly different inventory and configuration of parts; nothing more, nothing less. Also, you might ask, what's the harm in this if it's temporary?
And yet it did matter. A huge part of my ME had been stolen. Grandma was way more into my business than she had any right to be!
Angry and full of self pity, I jabbed buttons on the remote, looking for something watcheable on sucky broadcast television ......... When suddenly the garish green grass of a baseball stadium filled the screen. Top of the second. The Dodgers and the Mets out in L.A.
The Playoffs. I had forgotten all about this game .......... Perfect!
I ran to the kitchen cupboard, found a can of pretzel sticks, grabbed the half a six pack of Michelob that Dad had out of the fridge. I returned to the living room settled back into recliner chair (which through some unspoken proprietary code was always mine to sit in when Dad wasn't using it), hefting my oddly small and dainty feet up onto the padded platform, and smiled.
27 days and two hours to go until the old witch switches us back...
Two beers later. One hour down, 649 to go...
I knew I couldn't do it for a whole month, but for right now I didn't want to think about this new body of mine. I was still dealing with the oddness of taking a piss a while back ....... I had known the approximate proceedure, to sit down, and about where I would have to wipe, but the process had felt alien and ......... untidy.
Staying immobile, immersing myself in the game was an escape into something that was familiar to me, comforting in its banality, in its utter divorce from any reality outside of its very limited rules and objectives. Damn, he shouldn't have swung at that! Why don't they take that pitcher out, can't they see he's done for tonight? And like that.
I thought that the vague anstiness I had been feeling over the past half hour was some side effect of my transformation. Or for all I knew women ALWAYS felt this on edge. Some might say that this explained a lot. But whatever it was, the weird anxiety kept increasing.
It was during one of the commercials---a public service announcement---that I finally figured out what it was. A man in a suit and tie skulks out of his office building to have a cigarette in the designated area. He lights up, takes a deep drag, and proceeds to cough so hard that he expells all the main organs affected by smoking. By means of computer animation his tongue, his larynx, his lungs and finally his heart go flying out of his mouth to land on the concrete with a sickening splat, a collection of gruesome diseased blobs.
And I thought: Aaaaaaahhh! THAT'S what I need!
It all made sense now. I had quit smoking five years earlier, on my sixth attempt; so now that I had a mental framework for it, it was a very familiar sensation. The way my mouth watered at the closeup of the butt that lay there next to the caved-in looking dead man, fuming deliciously.
Joy's body was addicted to nicotine. So I would sit here suffering her withdrawl symptoms, while she was upstairs in my body, probably sleeping like a baby. It was the sort of situation that had Joy written all over it...
Her purse still sat on the kitchen table, and I'm sure she had some of those nasty French ciggies sitting in there. And it wasn't like it would be MY lungs and such I was polluting. But I didn't want to re-familiarize myself with all the rituals of the habit. The spongy tube poised between the fingers, the hand to mouth motion, the paraphernalia of lighters and ashtrays. My five failed attempts to quit had all been done in by "just one" or "just today". I would just have to tough this out...
...
...
...
...
... SHIT!!!
Suddenly a big bowl of ice cream sounded really, really good! That pint of Haagen Dasz I had seen in the freezer. I got up and checked it out. It was Perfect Peach, my father's favorite, and it was unopened. Yay! Back in Dad's chair, which seems to have grown since my trip to the kitchen, I slid the spoon into the gelid pinkish goo.
The sugar hit my system like an opiate. The high pitched moan that escaped me was a slatternly sound, eerily remniscent of the women in porn films, which jarred me back to an awareness of my transformed condition. And then I shrugged---(It is what it is)---and went back for a second spoonful.
The Mets had beaten the expatriate bums, and were one step closer to the Series. Could we actually do it this time? Or come to think of it, did I even care? Baseball had suddenly moved way down my list of priorities ........ My father in the hospital. Bushwhacked by Joy being here. Magical transformations. What a weird and fucked up day. I knew that I'd better try to get to sleep before the nicotine jimjams returned...
When I got to my room and saw the convertible sofa, I swore. They should have thrown it out years ago. When the bed was pulled out there was this horrible steel bar running right under the middle of the thin mattress, that gave me a backache every time I used it. Only now, instead of being six-foot-two I was five-four, and I discovered I could lay across the bed sideways, avoiding the evil back destroyer. So okay, that was one definite advantage of being stuck in this body.
Hot night, windows wide open, sleeping in my usual semi-curled-up position wasn't too strange- except for the odd and sweaty sensation of breast lying atop breast. But sensation is fading fast. I am grateful that this swap happened at a time when Joy's body seems to be free of meth and such...
As I drift off I consider the irony of my situation. The fact that this should happen to me; who---while hardly some "bear"---loves being a guy and doing guy things ........ when there are people like my friend Elsa who would give anything to have this happen to them. It hardly seems fair.
I remember when Elsa first came out to me and Ricky. It felt good, heartening that she had chosen to confided in us, correctly assuming that he and I would be accepting and supportive. I don't think she was aware yet of the enmity many gays and lesbians feel for the transgendered, the belief that they must really just be gay people who have adopted an extremely convoluted sort of denial, to avoid the stigma of-
OH SHIT! RICKY!
I had promised my boyfriend that I would call him as soon as I got here. But this voice I now spoke with did not sound remotely like my own, and it was going to be like this for a whole month. So I could either call and give him my unbelieveable story, try to convince him it was true, or just drop out of contact with Ricky until I returned home in November as a male.
Either way, I got some serious 'splainin' to do to...
.
Grandma ran the brush through my long straight hair. It was sensual, soothing. "So. Any questions about all this girl stuff?"
"You said when you body-swapped us that you weren't going to give us any pointers."
"I just meant don't be running to me over every little thing. And I was pretty angry then. I'm still your grandma. I'm a witch, not an ogre."
I thought about that little white bulb-thing I had seen sitting in with Joy's things in the bathroom. "Well okay. Then about, um, cleaning. I was wondering. When, or should I say how often ......... am I suppose to, uh- what I mean is, um ......... douche?"
.
||| SATURDAY OCTOBER 4, 2008 ~~~
.
I crept into my sister's room shortly before dawn. Joy had kicked the sheets completely off the bed during the night. He lie on his back in the rosy light, snoring, stark naked, oblivious to the Iwo Jima Memorial of an erection angling up from his furry crotch. I know this is a normal part of the nightly sleep cycle for males, and maybe I shouldn't have been weirded out by the sight of what until recently had been my own penis, but this was a disturbing little tableau to find myself in, and I did my best to avoid looking at him, at it, as I stole over to the chair that he'd draped my/his Dockers over, and started going through the pockets.
As it turned out our wallets each had exactly $60 in them, so neither of us would have profited monetarily from being in possession of the other's stuff. But mine had four credit cards to his single ATM debit card. And while I had both our wallets out I swapped our ID's. What good was a driver's licence going to do me that bore the image of some swarthy, bearded 6'2" Arab-terrorist-looking guy? For the next 27 days I would be using Joy's NY State ID card---for all intents being Joy Maria Farranino---until Grandma returned us to our own bodies on All Hallows Eve. I seriously hoped that no one would issue a warrant for my sister's arrest before then. It was a fairly remote possibility, but not as remote as I would have liked.
My younger sibling didn't quite have the initiative to be a real criminal, but he was notoriously impulsive about whatever opportunities for larceny he might randomly come across, if they seemed like easy pickings or if he was drunk. So it was with considerable misgivings that I slid my license into the window of his shoddy slick plastic HELLO KITTY wallet and stuffed it into his pants pocket. I retrieved my keychain from the opposite pocket and replaced it with his; a huge jangling knot of about fifty keys- none of which probably even went to anything anymore, but I imagined were kept as mementos of every short term job or living situation in his chaotic life. Several were motel room keys, stamped with the return address, that I would guess he kept just to be messing with somebody...
Joy's eyes were open, regarding me from out of a fog of sleep. "What I'm doing over there?" he slurred before they eased shut again.
I tiptoed from the room, stopping to inspect the four shoes sitting next to the door. There was a pair of woven jute sandals, and some weird klutzy multicolored pumps that looked like a couple of incredibly ugly Rose Parade floats. God, not those...
Compared to my normal size 12 men's shoes, these sandals I was carrying by their thin straps seemed to weigh nothing, and they looked like they would be too small to fit anyone. But slipping them onto my feet downstairs in the kitchen I found they fit perfectly. Our grandma had bewitched us in the hopes that "walking in each other's shoes." would teach us something. But as I got up and strode across the kitchen and back I had no great epiphanies. Mostly I was just glad they were flat heeled and comfortable, nothing like the treacherously high heels I seemed to recall Joy favoring, which I would have needed practice to even walk in...
Nor did these burgundy jeans I had on seem all that unfamiliar to me. Or this long sleeved solidarity-with-the-working-class denim blouse, just a man's work shirt with the buttons reversed. I was quite grateful that this wasn't the miniskirted black and florescent pink and clear plastic outfit Joy had worn to our Mother's funeral, which---with that Marla Singer rat's nest of hair she'd been sporting---had made her look like some kind of Martian junky cheerleader.
I took the key to my truck off of my ring and threaded it onto a leather bootlace I'd found in the junk drawer, which I fashioned into a crude necklace. My sister's plum red fingernails weren't outlandishly long, just a quarter of an inch past the tips of my fingers, but it was a quarter inch longer than I was used to, and tying the knot was difficult. If these nails were still this awkward to use tomorrow I would lop them off.
I slipped the leather cord over my head, dropping the key down my blouse, in between what the label on the brassiere I had fumbled my way back into this morning said were my C-cup breasts. This is how serious I was about keeping this key---my truck---out of his clutches.
I was starting to pour myself a bowl of cereal when I heard Grandma's voice. "Don't Joy- I mean Teddy. I'm making omelettes for all of us."
"You don't have to go through all that trouble."
"I sort of do. Those things will keep forever," she frowned, indicating the box of Cocoa Puffs, "But that whole carton of eggs won't. It's either this or hard-boil them for later."
"Then sure, I love your omelettes. So when's visiting hours at the hospital?"
"Nine to noon, one to four, and five to eight, unless otherwise noted. At my age you get to visit a lot of friends in the hospital. Hours are real short up in the IC unit, but thankfully he's in a two bed room. I take that decision as a good sign, even if they're only guessing," she said, laying a hand on my shoulder, "Did you sleep good?"
"Like a rock. I was surprised."
"Well it cooled off a little, finally," sighed Grandma. She poured herself a cup from the pot of coffee I'd made. Sipped it, made a face. "Now that's a cup of coffee!"
"I like it strong," I shrugged.
"I guess so." Grandma set her mug down and came toward me, appraising me affectionately. Picked my long ponytail up off my back, "This is nice."
"I was just trying to keep it out of my face."
"That'll work. But you shouldn't use a rubber band for a tie. It'll really wreck your hair." She broke the rubber band and worked it free of my hair, "I'm sure I can find something better. Also, when it's this long you should let it dry more before you bundle it up. You took a bath this morning?"
"Just a shower."
"I'll be that was interesting for you," she grinned. She reached into the purse in front of me and came up with a brush. Tilted my head back and started brushing my hair out, a slow methodical proceedure.
"It was different," I said. The strangeness of it all as I slid the soap over the unfamiliar and virtually hairless terrain of my soft belly, my flaring hips, my ass- feeling how the muscular grace of my gluteals had been replaced by the undignified roundness of these soft girlish orbs.
"So. Any questions about all this?"
I toyed with the metal studs in my earlobes. Rotating them, these unfamilar bits of metal stuck through my flesh. An oddly gratifying sensation. I had intended to get my ears pierced as a teenager, until my dad went absolutely apeshit over the prospect. I said, "I thought you told us you weren't going to give us any pointers."
She shrugged an apology, "I just meant don't be running to me over every little thing. I'm afraid I was in a bit of a mood last night. But I am still your grandma. I'm a witch, not an ogre."
I thought about that little white bulb-thing I had seen sitting in with Joy's things in the bathroom. "Well okay. Then about, um, cleaning. I was wondering. When, or should I say how often ........ am I suppose to, uh ......... douche?"
"Why? Does your pussy smell bad?" asked Grandma. She must have seen me flinch. "Well what do you want me to call it? Vagina? Yoni? Front bottom? Hoo Hoo?"
"No, that's- Pussy is fine."
My pussy. Twelve hours ago I couldn't have imagined I would be having a conversation like this. About PH balance and vaginitis, about old superstitions and social taboos born of mean old Judeo-Christian patriarchalism. About a whole canon of fraudulent science (vaginal orgasm) foisted on women by male scientists who would rather weave theories inside the purity of their masculine intellects than accept any input from women themselves; a folly that lasted well into the 20th century...
Grandma surprised me by saying that under ordinary circumstances it shouldn't be necessary to use the thing at all. That like any warm moist body cavity, if you get right down next to it, a vagina will have a smell, but that's normal ......... And that Joy's penchant for frequent douching probably had more to do with some 'Lady Macbeth Syndrome' than a real sanitary necessity ........ And if there was such a necessity, an overpowering rankness coming from down there, it meant something was wrong, and I should go see a doctor. And that: "Just between us girls, there's things that are a lot more fun things you can put up there!"
"GRAND-ma!"
"Oh, like you've never used one before."
I started to shout "Grand-ma" again, but she had me. The old woman was seldom crude, but when she was, she was so casual and forthright about it that it was startling. I went into a major giggling fit- "You ....... My GOD you're incorrigable!"
She waggled her eyebrows like Groucho Marx, "Well hey. Who wants to be corrugated?"
We heard the shower starting upstairs, and then a baritone voice (that must have been very loud to be heard so clearly down here, coming through this old house's double flooring, rock-hard plaster and heavy solid oak doors...) started belting out, "Hey Figaro! Lala-la-lala-la-lala-la-lala; Whoah Figaro! Lala-la-lala-la-lala-la-lala! TUT-ti mi vogliono! TUT-ti mi vogliono! Qua la Parruca! Qua la parrucca-"
"Joy knows the words?!" I gasped, "But she HATES opera! What did she call it? Oh yeah- 'Music for phony snob asshole who all only pretend they like it because they think all the other phony snobs really do'..."
"Well you see? Maybe you don't know your sister as well as you think you do. She was sixteen when she used to yell about your Pavoratti albums. Sixteen. You two haven't talked---I mean actually talked---in years."
"FIGARO! FIGARO! FIGARO! FIGARO! FEEEEEE-GAAAAA-RRRO!" thundered my sibling. Joy's inventiveness and fine sense of pitch noticeably improved my singing voice, which had been adequate at best.
Our Neopolitan serenade moved on to Santa Lucia, then the 1980's novelty hit Shut Uppa You Face, and finally a demented rendition of that "What's Going On?" song by Four Non Blondes, where he discovered he couldn't hit those high yodelly parts anymore.
Grandma Rosa topped off our coffees and resumed brushing my hair. Dragging it down one side of my head then the other, a hundred fine steel fingers massaging my scalp. It felt wonderful! And yet...
"Jesus Teddy, you're so tense. Is this tugging too much?"
"No, not at all! It's just ............... I'm enjoying you doing this."
"And that's a problem?"
"No, I ......... But it's weird. You're treating me different. Being so nice to me."
She grinned, "And I beat you before?"
"I didn't mean that! You were nice---wonderful---but it was a different kind of nice. This is ...... I don't know. Something."
"I think I understand. This is a more female sort of bonding, at least for our culture and times. The differences are very subtle, nothing you'd probably even be aware of if this wasn't so new to you. And like you say, you're enjoying it. But you don't want to give in to any evil 'girl feelings'. You're afraid that if you take pleasure in anything that happens this month, while you're in this body, you might not want to go back. Is that it?"
"Maybe."
"Well I got news for you, Princess. If having your Grandma comb your hair and make you pretty is enough to turn you into a girl inside, you already always were one. You can't make someone male or female by how you dress them. And that includes what flesh they're wearing," she gently squeezed a patch of skin on my arm with her fingers and croaked in a weird gurgling voice, "Luminous beings we are, not this crude matter."
"That makes sense. I mean about people, not the mystical stuff necessarily."
She spoke calmly and slowly, lulling me, "So don't go spooking yourself. Just relax. Enjoy the scenery, the change in perspective. Think of this experience like going to go live in Japan for a while. Which as I recall you were all set on doing, before you suddenly got that job at the pool company. Remember that?"
"Mmmmmm," I purred, under the power of her Jedi mind trick, letting myself unknot as she brushes this side, that side, now all the way down to the ends.
"You observe all the customs, immerse yourself in the culture, hopefully learning to see things through their eyes. To find the beauty in their world, the logic in their ways. New experiences, expanding your horizons. That's really what life is about. But when you come back to the States, are you Japanese?"
"No. But maybe a little."
"Excellent point. So do you think you could live with 'a little'? Maybe becoming a more complete human being?"
"I guess so," I said as she smoothed down my bangs, which I'd tried and of course had failed to incorporate into my pony tail.
"There. All done. Now hold on a second and I'll..." She lay down the brush, and reaching back behind her started digging through the magic junk drawer, which so often seemed to have exactly what a person needed in it. She came up with a scrunchy covered in ruffled polka-dot fabric, held it up in front of me. "You like?"
"It's got dice on it," I said, but then decided that a pair of red plastic dice was not too terribly cutesy, compared to a lot of other things that could have been on there. I nodded my approval.
Holding the scrunchy wide open, she carefully slid it up the length of my hair, proclaiming (in a teasing ironic tone that acknowledged my hesitancy about all this), "I crown thee ........ Princess Teddi! With an 'i' of course."
"Of course."
"Awwwwwww, ain't that sweeeeeet? Is Gwammie fixum widdle sissy's hairs up?!" came a mocking male voice. Like a shit-grenade tossed into the conviviality of the moment.
Oh. Joy.
He stood there, self-conscious in just a pair of boxers, holding my slacks and shirt up in front of him like some reluctant Army inductee. "I need clean clothes. I can't wear these, they stink!"
"I know, I was driving all day yesterday. Bring both our bags down and we'll exchange wardrobes. Mine's that American Tourister- you'll see it."
As he ran upstairs Grandma whispered to me a serious tone. "Remember, don't let him bait you."
"I'm trying Grandma, for your sake. I mean with everything you're going through."
"I wish you could see how important this is for you, but I suppose that's a start."
"He sure doesn't make it easy! The first- I mean the VERY first thing out of his mouth when he came in here today. Not 'Good morning' or 'How are you?', but taunting us like some stupid little brat! And then he has the nerve to turn right around and hit me up for a favor. I felt like telling him to get bent."
"He does that because he knows it works with you. It takes two to have an argument, and you'd be surprised how quick he'll give up if you don't react. You're the mature one here; so whether it's fair or not, the responsibility is more yours. It might help to remember that beneath that whole 'party animal' act he's not a happy person..."
When Joy returned we opened our suitcases, piling everything onto the dining room table's heavy lace cover.
Joy found jeans and a t-shirt to put on. He was scornful of my unimaginative "Mormon" wardrobe, but I at least had provided him with a lot of clean clothes; while his overnight bag held just a few random odds and ends. A fresh pair of panties and a second brassiere. A sheer aqua-colored rayon tank top. A pair of knee-length socks striped in various sherbert colors. A short plaid skirt that might have facilitated some boyfriend's Catholic schoolgirl fantasy, probably in conjunction with these black fishnet stockings. The greater part of the bag had been taken up by three sweaters, each heavier than the last. Real fucking practical when the night's lows were above 80 just before dawn!
"Damn it Joy, didn't anyone ever teach you how to pack?"
"Hey, it wasn't my fault! Shit happens. The landlord wouldn't let me get any of my stuff when he locked me out. That's just spiteful, you know? All my good shoes. I mean how's that going to get him the back rent? And if I hadn't left a few things at Lester's place I really would've been screwed!"
It seemed to me that this definitely was his fault, but arguing wasn't going to change my situation. I would need to buy clothes, and soon. And since I would only need the stuff for a month, I decided to try the thrift shops before I went on some mad shopping spree at the mall, like the transgendered heroines in those crazy stories (magical transformations, indeed!) that my neighbor Elsa was always writing...
There were smaller odds and ends that needed to be either transferred or kept. His MP3 player. My travel alarm. His pack of colored Sharpies. My checkbook- which I hurriedly stuffed into my pocket! With my ID, my face, and his talent for forging signatures he could have a real field day!
He pointed, "There's still some things of mine in that purse."
It was supple red leather with gold embellishments and a shoulder strap, fairly large, deep enough to be functional even with the busted clasp. I held it upside down over the table, emptying it. He grabbed lip balm, a packet of kleenex, six quarters. He was about to take the pair of gold hoop earrings but then ceded them to me- "Don't lose them."
"I won't. Thanks."
He smiled, "You like these?"
"I sort of do."
As I mentioned, I'd wanted to get my ears pierced when I was younger. And I had actually planned to, until my father got wind of this and told me he'd throw me out of the house if I did something so goddamn faggoty. I was shocked. So many vociferously straight boys were doing it that I didn't see it as a "gay" thing at all. I thought he had to be kidding- this was 1991 for God's sake! But when I realized how dead serious he was, the earrings became another of those things that I decided to put off until I moved out on my own; and that I somehow never got around to.
So wearing these would be like crossing something off my list. And though I chided myself for the pettiness of it, given Dad's perilous condition, I sensed that wearing them right in front of him would be like some sneaky sort of revenge...
Joy poked through the pile of stuff from the purse, and then checked the empty bag frowning.
When I realized what this was about I became furious. "If you're looking for your cigarettes, I busted them up and flushed them down the toilet."
He smiled hesitantly, "Really? Okay, that's great. I'm uh, quitting. It's hard to explain, but I just don't feel the need."
"Not so goddamn hard to explain at all. It's because I'm in your goddamn body, going through your goddamn nicotine withdrawals. Thanks a bunch, 'Bro'!"
"Then I really owe you one! But it's been half a day now, the longest I've ever gone. I really think I can do this. A fresh start and all that," he threw his shoulders back and took a huge deep breath, smiling, showing me how much he preferred being able to do this to his poisonous little vice.
Joy's usual style was to simply tell anyone suggesting that he might curtail any of his habits to fuck off. And he never, ever 'owed one' to somebody. Was it possible that he actually meant it? Calming down, I said, "Well I hope you can. You'll probably never get a better chance than this."
In the kitchen Grandma hollared out. "Kids, breakfast is ready!"
The omelettes were perfect---loaded with peppers and unions, tomato, pancetta, and a perfect blend of mild and more intense cheeses---and at 9:00 we were ready to go to the hospital. Almost ready.
I was still fighting the idea---well it was actually more of a vague subliminal impression---that since I didn't have my "spout" there, then what was keeping the pee inside me? I was sure this illusion would fade as my male anti-accident software adjusted itself to the unfamiliar tactile input this new body was sending it. But until it did...
"Hang on," I said, and ran upstairs to the bathroom. And this time it actually had been a good idea. Coffee, coffee, coffee...
As I came back down the stairs I heard Grandma telling Joy in a calm, conspiratorial tone, "Don't let it get to you when Teddi acts like she knows everything. There's something secretly insecure about anyone who's that in control all the time. It takes two to argue, and you're the one who knows how to step outside the 'rules' of a situation. If she starts to bait you just tell yourself 'I'm not playing that game'..."
Dad's car usually sat on the stub of a driveway I'd pulled into last night. Most of the houses on our block didn't have a driveway, so the parking situation here was rather dog-eat-dog. I looked up and down the crowded street for the big Lincoln Continental, "Where's the Beast?"
"Still at the restaurant," said Grandma, "We can swing by their on the way home and pick it up. We'll have to take your beast."
Joy stuck his hand out. "Give me the keys, I'm driving."
I cackled wildly, "Are you insane? NO WAY am I letting you drive my truck!"
"I'm the one with the driver's license, remember?" He pulled out his pink kitty kat wallet and waved it at me like a talisman. It looked absurd in his beefy paw. By comparison, my own stylish eelskin wallet was living up to its unisex presumptions.
"That's a piece of plastic. I'm the one that EARNED the license. You're the one who's license was revoked. Remember? The one the New York Post called 'a one woman demolition derby', Our current bodies don't change that fact. You are so lucky that Judge didn't-"
"Shut up you two, or I'll stick you in both inside Josepho's little friend there," Grandma Rosa glowered, pointing at the statue in the center of our tiny fenced-in front lawn. "I'll drive!"
We regarded the lawn ornament, a three-foot tall concrete negro in a brightly painted stable boy's uniform, grinning toothily as he held out a steel ring. A hitching post, although I don't think our father would have taken too kindly to anyone parking a horse on his precious dichondra .......... Grandma was kidding of course, but the idea that she could trap us inside the thing was unnerving.
"You're driving?"
"Why not, Joy? I have a license," she grinned campily, "One that matches my gorgeous face."
"But you won't even be able to see over the steering wheel!"
"Then I'll just have to look through it. If I may, Teddi Dear."
"Il piacere é mio, Gorgeous." I said as I withdrew the key from its snug fleshy hiding place, pulled it off over my head and placed it in Grandma's outstretched palm.
Because I used it to haul pallets of heavy steel swimming pool panelling around, my F-350 with it's double back tires had a serious suspension system on it, and it was quite a climb up into the cab. At Grandma's request Joy her up into the driver's seat, then he and I got in the other side. As I climbed in first he snickered, "You really like riding bitch, don't you?"
What?!! I hadn't heard this term since I was in high school, and even there it wasn't one that was bandied about by the artsy intellectual kids I hung out with. It had to do with the idea that for a guy to ride in a car sitting between two other males was a mark upon his masculine honor; And if it couldn't be avoided one should at least save face by complaining about it, noting that Jimmy here is a much better candidate for the wussy bitch seat, ha ha ........... Infantile back then, and given our current circumstances it was beyond bizarre. Bitch was never a word that Joy would tolerate in any context that pertained to her, or to women as a class. But today he was smirking gleefully over having just taunted me with it. I sighed, "Just ........ grow up."
Perched behind the wheel in her old-fashioned fuchsia and white gingham dress and fuchsia safari hat Grandma looked like some weird little Muppet. She had to rachet her seat all the way forward to reach everything she needed to.
But then she adjusted her mirrors, yanked back on the shift lever and skillfully eased us into the street,
our concrete jigaboo* grinning his encouragement...
.
[*Dad cagily denied it, but we all knew this grotesque piece of statuary was his racist Guido "up yours!"
to the few African Americans living on our block...]
.
To be continued...
.
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...
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."
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?"
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...
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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I hadn't been home in years when I got the call from Grandma, that my father was in the hospital, and now suddenly here I was ....... Like a lot of families, ours had its share of secrets. My sexuality for example, which was known but never discussed, under a shadow of omerta. Or the fact that my grandmother was an actual witch. My sister Joy + I only found THIS out when Grandma body swapped us, in hopes that leaving us like this a while might teach us something. So when we visited my father's bedside he assumed that I was Joy, and I couldn't believe how awful he was being to me! But I had no idea what awful was until I was left alone with him, and learned another of our family's secrets...
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||| SATURDAY OCTOBER 4 (still) ~~~
A half hour into our visiting Papa in the hospital, my grandmother dragged my sister off on some half hour errand that sounded like she'd made it up on the spot. Suddenly alone together, my father and I looked at each other. I could feel his attitude toward me hardening by the second. Tension filled the room.
I grinned, and just to be saying something said, "She's a character, isn't she?"
"I guess if you don't have any," he said flatly.
"What?"
"Character. Decency. You can leave too, you know. Don't let me keep you."
He's never been a good patient, even just being home with the flu, I reminded myself, and pretended to miss his point. "Okay, sure. In a little bit. You're tired huh?"
"You could say that. My mother is ten times the woman you'll ever be. It makes me sick to hear you talk that way about her."
"Like what? That she's a character? We always kid about her like that."
"You and who? The junkies? Planned Parenthood? Hilary Goddamn Clinton?"
"No, you know. Like that time she-"
My memory came up blank. And I realized I never had seen him and Joy just kidding around.
Or rather, the last time I can recall this happening she had been at the age when she was totally gaga over horses; and he was making her giggle uncontrollably by pretending to be a horse, but one that said he found hay and oats disgusting, that he'd rather be fed pizza and tacos and Chicken McNuggets. Joy was probably around twelve then .......... But once boys entered the picture---and OVER MY DEAD BODY met YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO---the screaming started, and didn't end until she moved out at 18. But in her adulthood they had reached a state of détente, of at least pretending to be civil. So whatever this was it was fairly recent, and it was huge.
"Well I really do love Grandma Rosa," I said.
"She took you in again. That's what you love. She's a soft touch, always giving someone another chance. Just don't get too used to it. I plan on coming home soon, and you're out of there. Capisce?"
"That's fine, I understand. I do need to get a job, my own place to live."
"That's lovely," he intoned sarcastically. He muttered, more to himself than to me, "God damn it's hot in here!"
"And I hope with time I'll be able to make up for, uh ................. For what hurt you."
"How the hell would you do that? I know you're not stupid, so don't act stupid."
"If we could just talk about it," I said, trying to find out what "it" even was.
"If you were looking for a way to break my heart, you finally did it. I'm done discussing this. And like I told you, I'm done with you. You think I was kidding about that or something? Now LEAVE!"
"Look, I know we might have had our differences-"
"You won't leave? Of course not. You're gonna do whatever you want to, you always have. And I'm too weak to throw you out. So fine. Sit down and don't talk. Can you do that? Can you please at least do that?"
.
The desperation in this plea was surprising. I knew I should have left, and let him be. But there was some key event in the Farranino Saga that I had missed. A real mystery. I hadn't seen him this mad at Joy since she stole his beloved coin collection and spent all those rare coins at face value, on a couple of Beanie Babies or something...
.
So I sat. Picked up a PEOPLE magazine, and read an article about "unlikely" celebrity art collectors. I didn't see what made them so unlikely. Because they were young and didn't fit some elegant & snooty stereotype of the culturati? They were all actors and musicians and skateboard pros; of course they would like art. Then I found a pen in Joy's purse and tried to finish the crossword puzzle, glad that someone had already filled in all the weird little three and four letter hip-hop related answers, names like XXL and ZDOG which would have stymied me...
I could hear his labored breathing. Could sense him looking at me this whole time. Finally he spoke. "That's some get-up you're wearing. What a damn slob you've turned into!"
"I'm going clothes shopping later. I promise I'll wear something nicer tomorrow. And wear some makeup- I was kind of rushed this morning."
"Christ! I'd hate to see what a slut like you thinks is 'nice'."
Now wait just a fucking minute, I thought. With all of Joy's faults, all the things you could rightly call her, slut was one label that did not apply to her. She fell in love with one guy at a time, and if there had been a lot of them it was mainly because she was so hard to get along with.
But Dad tended to just make junk like this up and decide it was true. Like the time he had more or less called me a slut, way back when. Nevermind that I was still a virgin then, he knew all about these queers. That once I entered that cesspool of unnatural desires I was doomed to lose all self-control, becoming this raging insatiable pervert who lurked around park bathrooms, and shortly thereafter an AIDS statistic; A fate that---unless I was willing to go get myself "cured"---I would more or less deserve. I can't even tell you how much that pissed me off!
"I'm not a slut," I said, my voice rising.
"Oh, did I offend you?" he sneered, "It's a little late to start acting all moral, you've shown what you are. You should get you some big black moolie pimp, at least you'd be making money off it!"
That did it. I got up to leave. "I'll see you next time. I don't know what this is about, but I want you to know that I love you."
"Sure you do. You're just full of love! But I guess that's the new way, isn't it? Things don't mean what they mean anymore. Up is down. Black is white. Hate is love. Murder is a 'choice'."
"What did you say?!"
"You heard me."
I found myself dropping back into the chair. "Joy got an abortion? When?"
"What kind of person are you? To do a thing like that, it should be eating you up inside. Instead you make jokes about it."
"I can't explain," I stammered, "but I wasn't making a joke. You have to believe that!"
He spat, "Have to believe you? Well then yes ma'am, anything you say! You murdered a helpless baby and you never told me. You gave me some bullshit story, where you went; and I had to find out from the long distance bill. 'East Side Women's Reproductive Care Center'. That's another of these beauties, where they make things mean what they don't. Care Center! And women's? No real woman would ever go there. She wouldn't deny God's greatest gift to her sex!"
"Real woman? Who are you to decide what a real woman is?"
"Somebody who knows something, that's who. Right and wrong. All you know is how to get drunk and bang losers and LIE! Even after I confronted you, you lied, how you let this girlfriend use the phone," his voice took on an insipid feminine tone, "'Newww, really Papa! It was Jenny-fer, I swear to God!' You are one sick piece of shit, you know that?"
.
I was totally lost inside this role now. I'm not saying that I believed I was Joy, or was remembering some life different from my own. But the way my father's eyes bored into mine, devoid of anything but hatred---hearing him say such things to me with such conviction---was having a weirdly hallucinatory effect on me. The hellish reality here in this little room was overpowering everything that lie outside or came before, robbing it of meaning.
.
My jaw trembled, tears were welling up under my eyes, "Please don't say that."
"And then you joke. My grandson, you joke about! Y-you-" his shouting turned to a wracking coughing fit, doubling him over. But when I started over to help him he frantically motioned for me to stay away, to keep my repulsive paws off of him. I was untouchable.
"Listen Papa. Just listen! I know we have different views about abortion, and I respect yours-"
"You don't respect anything, least of all yourself. You go 'Oh gee, I'm pregnant'; and just waltz down to that place like you were getting your hair cut!"
"But it's not like that," I said, and the dam that was holding my tears in crumbled, "Please! It was a really hard decision for me. It always is, when it's yours, no matter what those people tell you. It weighs on you, keeps you awake at night. So don't think I don't feel it, Papa. The ......... the loss, it's with me!"
Where did THAT come from? But I did feel it- a physical sense of emptiness in my stomach, and in ............... my womb. The infant who should be asleep right now in my arms. It had been Joy's child, but I felt the time he'd been in this body, remembered the little bulge of my belly, my swelling breasts. Was I going insane? All I knew was I couldn't stop crying...
But if my tears moved him at all it was to greater loathing, "Oh my, you lost some sleep! I'm supposed to be impressed with that? If you had any decency you wouldn't be able to consider such a thing. It's MURDER!"
"Now wait, please! You say murder like there's no discussing it. You shout, like whoever's the loudest or gets the angriest has to be right! But there are other beliefs about when a person is a person."
"You don't have beliefs, you have excuses!" he roared, and lapsed into another bout of coughing. He grabbed up his sippy cup and drank, his eyes closed.
I dragged the sleeve of my shirt across my cheeks, knowing they would be wet again in seconds. "But I ....... I swear I thought it was for the best. What kind of life could I have given that child? With being between jobs and everything---and yes, the tweek and the vodka---I was in a bad place in my life. You know that!"
"You think Elizabeth and I were 'in a good place' when we had Teodoro? When we had you? We were struggling more than you ever did. That was supposed to be my grandchild. I mean what's Teddy going to give me? And you know I would of helped you. Or there's people who can't have kids, who are just dying to adopt. But you, you just couldn't be inconvenienced. Life is just one big crazy party to you!"
"But it's not, Papa!"
"It is. And you don't care who you hurt, you selfish puttana! Your mother died worried sick about you. And you showed up at her funeral dressed like Halloween!"
Oh God. Mom. I sobbed, the words barely recognizable, "I'm so sorry, Papa!"
"I put up with a lot from you, for years. The dope. The crumb bums you always had for boyfriends. You showing up all of a sudden to stay with us, too special to work and plan like the rest of us. I made excuses for ALL of that, because I thought underneath it all you were a good girl. Stupid wishful thinking. Because I've seen what's underneath now. And it makes me sick!"
I heard myself whimpering, a disconsolate little girl- "Please Daddy! Don't say that!"
"Then don't come visiting me," he wheezed, "If I die, I die. I sure don't need you here for that. Maybe God can forgive you, but I can't. And I'm ashamed-"
"No!"
"Ashamed I brought you into this world. Now out! Get out of my sight!"
I lurched to my feet, forgetting all about my big red bag until it spilled to the floor. Scooped it up and fled! Rushing through the door I almost colliding with an emaciated old brown-skinned man who was being slowly ushered into the room by a nurse pushing his wheeled IV stand.
"Jesus! Why don't you watch where you're going?" snapped the nurse.
"I trying," pleaded her patient.
"No not you, honey! I meant that peckerwood bitch..."
I stumbled down the hallway in a daze of bleak despair. My cheeks were burning, so hot that I was surprised they didn't evaporate the tears streaming down them. I felt drained of energy, like a robot whose batteries were running down. My feet weighed twenty pounds each as I slowly put one in front of the other, barely aware of the people milling past me at two or three times my pace. Some glanced at me with a pang of concern before moving on. They all seemed to be even taller than they had on my way in. Everything did...
It might not have been strictly logical for me to react as I had in there. My father hadn't actually been directing those vicious words at ME; It was more like I had accidently opened and read somebody else's hate mail. Ugly, but nothing that should be taken personally. But pummelled by his words, his tone---the absolute condemnation in his eyes---I had lost all objectivity. It was like some messed up Shakespeare tragedy; the insane old King mistaking the Prince for his traitorous sister and ramming the dagger into his breast. A dagger is a dagger.
But as the curtains rise on the next act we find the fallen Prince alive and well, awakening in his nightdress, feeling his chest and finding himself unscathed. And like the Prince, as hellish as that last scene had been it was rapidly coming to have no more substance than a bad nightmare for me. I was not Joy. I had not had an abortion. My father did not hate me like that.
But poor goddamn Joy! For her this was all terribly real, and there wouldn't be any corny plot devices coming to her rescue. And she just did not deserve this! I knew she could be a real bitch, and might deserve to be poked in the pantleg with a sharp fingernail, but not to be made to feel so worthless and wrong. More than anything right then I wanted to find her and let her know that she was somebody. Not filth or shit, and not a murderer. And any spiteful old pig who thought otherwise could just fuck off! Because for all her crassness and contentiousness and thievery, she was far more worthy than him; if he could speak like that to his own flesh and blood.
Wow ........ This was a reversal in my feelings toward Joy so sudden and extreme it almost made me dizzy. I grinned ruefully as I realized how cleverly this change of heart had been engineered. And by whom.
"Penny for your thoughts..."
I had been focused on the linoleum flooring directly ahead of me, with its pattern like a sea of roiling clouds. Looked up. "Oh. Hi Grandma Rosa."
She held out an open bag. "Salt water taffy?"
Sure," I said, and took one. Untwisted the paper wrapper and popped it into my mouth.
"Mmmmmm, licoriff! I thaw' you diddin' like thweets..."
"I like them too much is my problem. But I figure you kids will help me eat these."
Biting down, my jaw was held shut for a second by the sticky mass before I managed to open it. "Boy, I hope her teeth are in better shape under these caps than I think they are."
"Me too. And not just her teeth. That's some nasty stuff she was taking. But she slept the whole first day she was here, so let's hope."
"I know. I never understood her always having to be on something. But I think I'm starting to. I don't mean I approve, although I admit I like a little beer buzz now and then, but I can see, I mean..."
"Why she feels like she has too," my grandmother finished, "She doesn't like herself much."
I felt my anger boil up, "And gee, I wonder why!"
"What do you mean?"
"Oh come off it, Grandma."
"You mean your father. So things didn't go well between you?"
She said this with such deadpan innocence I had to laugh. "Look at you smirking! I feel like I just went seven rounds with the Incredible Hulk. It was a nightmare! And it looked like it was about to kill Dad, getting all worked up like that ........... And Joy. It just breaks my heart, what she has to be going through! I don't think I've felt this close to her since that summer she and I decided we were artists. You really are scheming old witch!"
We stepped to the side of the hall to converse easier, to let people pass. She grinned, "I'm just awful, aren't I?"
"You are. I hope the rest of your 'lessons in empathy' a-aren't so ......... Oh hell, I'm crying again."
"You might find yourself crying more easily now."
"Oh," I said, a bit spooked by this, something that should have occurred to me before. That this body wasn't just shaped differently. And yet I didn't think the bulk of my reaction what had happened on in there could be written off as some girly hormonal thing...
I took the lace hanky she offered (fuchsia), wiped my eyes and then honked my nose into it. "I don't know. I might have held out a little longer, but that would have totally got to me as a guy too. Got to anybody. You didn't hear it!"
"But I have. Me, him and Joy in the kitchen on that night last winter when it all came to a head. I left, went to stay with my coven sister Birda for a week. I couldn't be around him, I was furious! Shut up, he kept telling me, it was none of my business. And he had a few choice things to say about my philosophy, or at least his garbled version of it."
"What a jerk!"
"Yep. He was being the king of his castle, not listening to anybody, issuing banishments. And so when Joy left ............ It's funny, both you and your father seem to think she came back here just for a place to stay. I know she's come home a lot, but not this time. I could hear it in her voice, she meant it. That night was pretty much the last straw for her. I really had to beg her. To do this for me, not him."
I felt sheepish. "I didn't know. Nobody told me all this was going on."
"Well Josepho wasn't talking about it, couldn't let our relatives know 'the shame she has brought upon this family'," Grandma Rosa wheezed, doing a pretty good imitation of Brando's Godfather, "And Joy wasn't saying anything, so I didn't."
I noticed that we had reverted to referring to my now-male sister as 'she' and 'her'. But when speaking of Joy's life as a woman this seemed to make more sense. "Yeah, but you made sure I found out. So you really could've told me."
"I'll confess, I'm just a scheming old witch. I wanted you to get the full impact, a taste of what she's gone through her whole life. He was always so proud of the fact that he never hit you kids, or Elizabeth, like this was some amazing feat. People underestimate the power of verbal abuse. Use certain words on someone consistently enough, especially a child, they'll get a sense that there's just something wrong about them, basic and unfixable. Or freezing them out---'I'm going to stop loving you now.'---whenever they displease you. You got some of that from him, but-"
This struck me like an emotional death sentance. Damnation itself-"Oh God, don't say that!"
"No Sweetie, I didn't mean that! You're nothing like him. I meant about you being on the receiving end. No, you turned out great. You're an asshole to your sister, but she ....... But other than that you're pretty darn huggable."
"I am?"
"Come here!" She held her arms open. I swung my shoulder bag back out of the way and basically dove into them. It was startling to feel my breasts flattening against her rather flaccid ones, but only for a second. Then it was just a regular old Grandma hug, and much needed. Her unalloyed love and acceptance. And it was neat that we were much closer to the same height, rather than my having to stoop way down, not a position you want to stay in for long time. She kissed me on the cheek, "Yes indeed, very huggable."
"You too. Very! I love you Grandma. In this family, it's great how you're just so ......... you."
Growing up, there had always been a hint of condescension in the family's conversations about Grandma when she wasn't present. That nutty Rosa. Too direct, interested in strange things, all that travelling she did by herself not quite proper in some way. Her impulsiveness could be just plain embarrassing, like when she started yodelling in that crowded museum, fascinated by the acoustics. But to me as a kid, although I only saw her on holidays and visits, she stood as a role model. An inspiration. An example of what real sanity might look like, as opposed to merely cultivating an appearance of normalcy, out of some atavistic fear of being rejected by the pack.
"That means a whole lot to me." she said, rocking me. It was a good long hug, so comforting after being reviled like that. But ultimately it was too sticky-hot a day to stay pressed together like this. When she felt me loosening my grip Grandma did too. Stepped away, her hands sliding down the lengths of my arms until her fingers clasped mine.
She mimicked panting briefly, "It's hot in here, isn't it?"
I examined at the ungainly grey conduit running down one side of the hallway's ceiling, "I think this mickey-mouse air conditioning of theirs is busted. It was hot in Dad's room too."
"So I guess we should find Joy and head on back," Grandma said.
"Back to see Papa? I don't know if I can!"
"Relax, kiddo! I meant back home. We're done here for today."
"Great," I sighed, "Because I think I would have had to take a cab home."
"I would've understood if you had to, but I need you to help pick up The Beast at the restaurant. Get it out of there before something happens to it."
"Why such a short visit?" I asked as we started walking, toward the elevators.
"I just ran into one of Jojo's doctors. He said they're taking him in for a lung capacity test, and if they think he's up for it they're doing an EKG on a treadmill..."
"I hope they can figure out what it is and fix it," I said.
"Yeah. I'm sorry that was so painful for you in there. But there was a point to that, I wanted you to see what Joy has been going through."
"Yes I figured that. He was just so judgmental! There was none of that 'Judge ye not' or 'Cast not-' stuff, like you would hope a Christian---or an ex-Christian, whatever he is---would remember. No compassion, or trying to understand her side of things, or thinking that her motives could have been anything but totally selfish and rotten."
Grandma beamed at me, like I was one of her brighter pupils back when she taught school for a living, back in the days of Hula Hoops and fallout shelters. "Well said! Now consider that this didn't just happen out of the blue, because of his rather strong views on abortion. That all this judgement and attributing the worst possible motives to her has been going on for a long time."
"I know. He always did that with me and her."
"Both of you?"
"Of course both of us," I snapped.
"I know he went completely ballistic on you when you came out. Which is kind of ironic, considering what you were doing was exactly what he'd taught you about being a man. Stand tall, be proud of who you are, don't take shit from people. Fathers believe this in theory, but they also expect a son to turn out exactly like them. Or at least within whatever limits they decide are reasonable. But as bad as that was, there was a lot that Joy went through that you missed out on. In a family like ours---'blue collar' I guess you'd call us---young men are expected to raise a certain amount of hell. You're given a certain degree of latitude..."
"That's just bull, Grandma. He was always busting my chops."
The long hall ended in a t-intersection. This new hallway had narrow windows along its far wall, meaning we had reached the outer edge of the building. It felt less oppressive being here. (I'd never been claustrophobic but I knew Joy was, slightly. Perhaps phobias were rooted in some primitive part of the brain that isn't affected by a body swap. How much of me was Joy now, and vica versa?) We turned right, toward the elevators.
"Really? Always?" she frowned, "Okay, let's say for example when you went out someplace. Did he ask you where you were going?"
"Well sure. Sometimes."
"But did he DEMAND to know where you were going?"
In a flash I saw what she was getting at. I had an image of Joy, a composite of all the times I'd seen her hovering at the door or in the parlor while he cross-examined her...
"He did do that, didn't he? Just about every time she left the house! Wow, you're right. And that tone he used when he did it. So accusing, like she was on trial. Guilty until proven guilty. I remember that. And then calling around, checking up on her. He never did that with me. So I see what you mean about latitude. And he was getting all bent out of shape way before she did anything to warrant it. It's almost like she decided, 'If I'm gonna be accused of all this stuff, I might as well be doing it!'"
"A self-fulfilling prophecy," Grandma nodded.
"Exactly! No wonder she started rebelling. It's like, as soon as she started puberty, he always had something cutting to say to her. At the dinner table, in the car; just running her down!" I was growing agitated over this revelation that was unfolding in my brain, "And he did it over just the littlest, stupidest shit. How she sat, how she ate- my God, how she DRESSED! That was a big old deal with him! With me, there had been that one thing about the earrings---or tuck your shirt in, get a haircut---but nothing like he was doing to her! I never heard, 'You're not setting foot out of this house dressed like that!'; or the time he told her 'You might be the tramp of the eighth grade but you don't have to advertise it!'
"Ugh!" said Grandma, making a face like she had shit on her tongue, "I wasn't there for that one. I know I would've had something to say about that."
"What a horrible, hateful thing to say to a kid! Especially when there was absolutely nothing wrong with that outfit. That was that self-fulfilling prophecy thing again; because right after that she started shopping at The Madonna Store at the mall, sneaking the bustiers and things out and putting 'em on at a friend's house ............. What did he want her to wear, a fucking burka? Wait! You know what? He probably did! He probably ........ fucking ........ DID! You are so right, Grandma. Most of the time I had it a hell of a lot easier than her! Why didn't I notice this before?"
"You were a teenager yourself then. Teens are a pretty self-obsessed lot."
"Wait a minute! I can't say I never noticed it. I did see it. I saw him bagging on her, belittling her, undermining her like that- and I thought it was funny! I hated her that much. Plus I knew that as long as he was on her case he wasn't on mine. I was happy when he tormented her! I never considered how that must have made her feel. But you know what it all boils down to, Grandma? Why Papa acted like that? And why I didn't even see it?"
"No, tell me."
"It's this whole sick male supremist double-standard thing. Guys like Dad, it's like they think they have some right to tell the women in their lives how to live, what is and isn't 'proper', right down to the little nitpicky junk. It's such a basic part of their worldview they just assume they can do this, like they're entitled to it. I look back on my life, our family, and ........... Like him telling you to shut up like that. Or how he treated Mom! He loved her, he loved her, she was an angel, blah blah blah. But could she have her own checkbook? No, she had to come ask him when she wanted something and he decided if she should have it. He had to have control, the power, that fucking dickhead! It's all about power, isn't it? ............. Holy Shit! Everything the feminists say, it's all TRUE! I'd heard this stuff, figured there was probably something to it, but it was all theoretical to me before. It's so clear now..."
Grandma Rosa gazed heavenward, "Good Lord, I've created a monster."
"What? You don't think it's true? You of all people should see this!"
She cocked her head and said calmly, "Teddi dear..."
Somehow this got my attention. Made me aware that I had been practically shouting. "Uh oh ........... Was I going crazy?"
"Not crazy. But I've been breathing in and out here for about thirty-thousand days. And except for the three hundred and thirty-six of them I spent as a male---and a few Halloween parties---I've been a woman for every one of them. So uh, don’t'cha kinda think..."
Her tone was so droll by the end of her speech that we both started laughing. I nodded, "Okay, you got me. Pretty presumptuous of me to try to lecture you after one day."
"But it's good! Just the kind of breakthroughs I was hoping for when I swapped you and Joy. And yes it is true about men like him. But your father, he's a real dinosaur. Believe me, not all men are like that. My husband wasn't. And from what I've seen, your relationship with Joy isn't typical of how you relate to women. Yes there are still bastions of inequality in our society, and yes there's places on Earth where the situation women face is just sickening. But who ratified the 19th Amendment by an overwhelming majority? It was men, giving up privilege to do what was right. I'm not quite old enough to remember that, but I've experienced some pleasant changes in my time..."
"I guess you have," I said, "But nothing's going to change Papa."
"We'll see. Not that I expect to make a hippie out of him, but we'll see..."
We had got to the elevators. Grandma pointed, "Ah, there he is!"
Across from the elevators was a balcony, big enough to park a couple of cars on, that Joy seemed to have it all to himself. It was one of a series of them descending the front of the building.
"Go fetch him. I have to run to the powder room," said Grandma, and headed for the nearby bathrooms.
Joy was staring broodily out across a parklike part of the campus, the Nassau Wood, which looked like it would be just beautiful in Fall, if Fall ever got here. I stepped out into a Las Vegas heat that made me realize the building's air conditioning had been working fairly well after all.
When he heard the door open he turned to face me. He saw my tear stained face, the knowledge in my eyes, and a faint tremor passed through him. He shook his head. NO.
"I had no idea," I told him. "God damn that stinking son of a bitch!"
He stared down at his Hush Puppies, "I really don't want to talk about it."
I saw the anguish in his eyes. Said, "Fine. But if you ever do..."
He looked up briefly, smiling shyly. "Thanks. Maybe later."
And that was that. Hardly a big teary hug-fest, but for me and Joy it was a real milestone.
"I'll be in in a minute," he said, "Maybe you should go find Grandma."
"I found her. She'll be right along."
"Well I sort of need to be alone."
His posture seemed strange. Not like a person stands but like he was modelling his outfit. The way he was draped against the solid marble face of the railing, sort of leaning back, left hip cocked forward, in a way that looked artificial and not quite comfortable, a position dictated by the way he had turned, by the way he was holding his wrist way down past the top of the railing stuck.
Then I saw the whisps of whitish smoke curling up from about where his fingers would be. "Oh fuck! I should have known."
"Huh?"
"What's that in your hand?"
"Nothing," he said innocently as he brought his hand up. Fingers spread, empty. "What are you talking about?"
Damn. Well I'm not going to accuse him of anything without proof. He would just deny it.
"Hey," came an angry voice from the next balcony down, "Don't be throwin' no lit butts down here! I'm on oxygen fer Chrissake!"
I drawled wearily, "God damn it, Joy."
He became instantly hostile, "Here we go again .......... So I had one. Big deal!"
"There's no such thing as only one."
"You're like a broken record, you know? Everything I do ......... I'm just never gonna please you."
"Where do you get that? It's not 'everything you do'. This is about one specific, concrete thing. That's my body you're in, and I don't want you filling it with nicotine. It's not about anything but that. I'm not Papa, all right?"
"It's hard!" he protested.
"I know it's hard. It was hard enough to quit when I did. And then I inherited your addiction last night- well fine, neither of us asked to be switched. But goddamn it, I don't want to go through it all over again in November. I mean, is that so damn much to ask?"
"Alright, alright! Now get off my case," he snarled, in a way that didn't sound like he was agreeing to anything.
"That's it? 'Get off your case'? That whole big spiel you gave me this morning, I should've realized it didn't mean shit. Giving someone your word is just a short term strategy to you, saying whatever you think they want to hear to get rid of them!"
"I promised you I would try. And I did try!"
"You're really stuck in that whole teenage 'everybody's picking on me' thing, aren't you? For God's sake Joy, you're thirty-one! I'm not trying to tell you how to live your life. Just a few things I want because you happen to be in my body right now..."
"Okay, so I'm not all strong and have my shit together like you do! I'm a screw up, all right? I'm painfully aware of that!"
"I'm having a little trouble following these non-sequiters here. What does that mean exactly? That you can just call yourself a loser and exempt yourself from doing anything you don't like?"
"Well what about you and Ben and Jerry and Mr. Salty Pretzel last night?"
"WHAT?!" I cried, thinking he was accusing me of taking part in some weird orgy.
"Yeah. Pigging out like that!"
Oh, the ice cream. Yes I had some."
"Some? You had a whole fucking pint! That's over a thousand calories, and all fat!"
"How did you even know about this?"
"I saw the empties in the trash. That whole can of pretzels too!"
"What were you doing digging through the trash?"
"I was- never mind!" He stuck his chest out, all righteous indignation, "That's MY body you're in, and you just totally put a bunch of crap into it!"
"Oh yeah? The only reason I ate that ice cream was because I was jonesing over your damned cancer sticks. I still am!"
"I work really hard to keep my weight down. How many thirty-one year old women can say they weigh the same as they did in high school? And I don't want you turning me into some lardo!"
"Is that a 'lardo' body you're sitting in? Look at yourself. Not bad for a guy with a desk job," I said, and pointed out across the woods, "Go for a run around the whole Princeton campus, and come back here, and you tell me I don't know how to take care of myself. And I don't rely on snorting 'appetite suppressants' to do it. At least I hope you're only snorting them!"
"I quit all that," he said defensively.
"So you always seem to be saying."
"I DID! Have you seen me high or drunk since you got here?"
"You mean in the last eighteen hours? Why, is that a record for you?"
He glared at me miserably, "Well what if it is?!"
I thought of Dad and me back in the hospital room. Thought of my conversation with Grandma. I realised that badgering Joy was hardly the best tack to take here. All it did was bring up old wounds and shut down his critical faculties. I took a deep breath. "Oh. Then .......... that's good. Seriously, if it's that hard for you, then congratulations. I mean it. No sarcasm, no hidden barbs ......... And I'll tell you what. I'll lay off the ice cream---anything bad like that---and you try to stay clean and don't smoke for the duration. "
He nodded, "All right. I'm sorry I wasn't able to stick to my word. I'll really try."
"Talk to Grandma if you feel yourself starting to slip. She's probably got all kinds of good advice, meditation tricks and stuff."
"That is a good idea!"
"So we'll both try to be good to each other's bodies this month. Shake on it?"
He broke in to a childlike grin, "Sure, Bro'!"
We clasped hands---his all but swallowing mine---and shook; A single ritualistic way up, way down, and release. Halfway through we heard a faint click.
It was Grandma Rosa with a little disposable Fuji chip camera.
"Well that's going in the Christmas newsletter!" she smiled. "Alright muchachos, let's vamoos."
The elevator brought us down to the lobby. A mammoth room that they had taken great pains to modernize. It didn't even go with what lie on the floors above. And the air conditioning was sending a glorious stream of arctic air through the room.
We all three groaned in ecstasy, "Ahhhhhhhh!"
As we were crossing the waiting room Grandma called out, "Holy cow! It's Big Business!"
I followed her gaze to a large flatscreen t.v., and smiled, "Hey, Laurel and Hardy."
"And it's just starting. Let's grab a seat, kids."
Joy goggled at her. "Are you on glue, Grandma? You can watch TV at home."
"This would be over by the time we got there. No, we're not going anywhere for the next half hour. This is one of their all time masterpieces..."
There were six rows of cheap plastic chairs, and behind them a comfortable beige couch. As a mom and her kids vacated it Grandma and I took the couch. Joy remained standing. Fidgeting, "I can't watch that. It's in black and white."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I don't know. For some reason watching movies that aren't in color makes me feel sick to my stomach. Everybody all gray like that."
"Think of all the classics your missing," said Grandma, "It's a Wonderful Life, The Seven Samurai, Wild Strawberries, The Bicycle Thief, Sunset Boulevard, Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy..."
"I hate old shit like this," scowled Joy, "And you can't even hear it from back here. Let's just go."
"We don't need to hear it, it's a silent movie," said Grandma, "Now shoosh!"
"A silent movie? You guys are freaks, you know that?" he said, and stormed off, indignant that anyone could enjoy such a thing.
Stan and Ollie were selling Christmas trees door to door on a sunny day in Southern California. The neighborhood they were working in was up in the hills somewhere, and what was amazing was that down on the plain below you could see the Los Angeles City Hall, and instead of being lost among a jumble of nondescript office buildings like it is today, we see it is rising---all by itself---from what looks like a vast beanfield. Having been to L.A. a few times on business, it was startling to realize that sprawling mess of a city was ever so empty.
The entrepeneurs got ran off from the first two houses they tried. At the third house a balding man with a naturally pissed-off look about him answered the door, saw what they were selling, and rudely told them to scram.
"That's James Finlayson," Grandma grinned, "He worked with them a lot. Some call him 'the third Laurel and Hardy'. He's just the perfect adversary for them..."
When he shut the door a branch from the christmas tree was caught in it. To free it, they had to ring the doorbell again. He answered it, irate, yelling at them, but somehow as he slammed the door it happened again. And the next time a bit of Stan's coat was stuck in it. So they rang the bell again. By now the guy was convinced that they were doing it on purpose, and when he came out next he cut Ollie's tie off with a scizzors. They rang for him again and destroyed his hat. He cut their tree in half...
Driven by the mad logic of vendetta, the battle between the salesmen and the homeowner escalated, inexorably, picking up speed---they doing greater and greater vandalism to his house and him to their Christmas tree truck---until both house and vehicle were smashed to bits. What had started as a minor argument ended with all parties involved being ruined.
As Grandma hauled me to my feet I was laughing so hard that people were staring. And I suppose there was a tinge of hysteria to it, a release of toxic energies I'd accrued during that horrible visit with Papa.
"That was insane," I brayed. "It's like they all lost everything, just to prove a point. To get the last shot in. My God! Who could possibly be that stupid?"
.
.
To be continued...
My sister and I had been living in each other's bodies for about 19 hours. Our grandmother had done this to us, hoping we might learn to empathize with each other and put an end to our lifelong feuding. The body swap had been a strange experience, and downright horrible at times, but in my case at least it seemed as if the old witch's lesson was starting to work. I began to see why my sister was the way he was, and to regret our not being closer. Until for no apparent reason he tried to sabotage the best thing in my life...
.
||| SATURDAY OCTOBER 4 (continued...)
Grandma, Joy and I made our way across the gummy asphalt of the parking lot, the sun beating down on us. After my harrowing encounter with Papa I couldn't remember where we had parked even in general terms, but Grandma Rosa led the way, and soon enough we saw my red F-350, poking up slightly from amid the surrounding cars.
"Here Teddi. I've had enough fun for one day," said Grandma, passing me my key on its shoelace necklace.
Joy suggested brightly, "I can drive!"
"We're running a bit low on groceries," Grandma said, "You kids want we should shop for food today or tomorrow?"
"I can drive," repeated Joy as he followed me to the driver's side door.
I sighed, "Are we going to go through this every time? They revoked your license..."
"Well technically, yeah. But I have yours to show them, and we're the only ones who know I'm not you."
"Sure. And then maybe I'll go on a 'ride along' with a kamikazi pilot."
Joey trudged sullenly around the front of the truck, muttering, "Fuck, it's not like I don't know how to drive! I'm totally sober, and you're both right here with me. Six miles to the restaurant is all I was asking. But you just have to be on a power trip..."
The driver's seat seemed to be situated impossibly close to the steering wheel, but when I clambered in I discovered that I only had to move it back in inch from where my grandmother had it.
"Wowie Zowie it's hot in here!" she exclaimed as she opened their door. Even with these heavy jeans on, my ass agreed with her. I turned the engine over, started the air conditioning. She said, "It's funny though, there aren't actually any laws about all this body swap stuff. It might make for some interesting court decisions. Help me up, Joey."
"That shouldn't take them long to sort out," I said, "It only makes sense that all of a person's rights, what they own, their citizen status would go along with them in the swap."
"You would think, but sometimes the courts just want to preserve the status quo. For all we know the swap itself might not be recognized. You'd still legally be her and you him."
Joy climbed in, slammed the door. "Cool, so then I own this truck!"
"In that case, there's a payment due this month. And insurance at the first of the year. Now for gas, try the White Star station in Grover's Mill. That couple of cents a gallon cheaper makes a difference if you're putting in more than $50."
Joy looked a bit queasy suddenly, "Naw, I was just messing with you. Of course it's your truck-" he stopped, looked at Grandma. "Did you just call me Joey?"
"I sure did," grinned Grandma, "If she's 'Teddi-with-an-I' now, then it only seems fitting that you get a guy name. And Joey, I figure it's only one letter off, so-"
"No way! Not 'Joey'. It's such a jerky name."
"Can you think of one you like, then? Something you feel right with? Or I'll keep calling you Joy if that's what you want."
"What I'd feel right with---what I want---is for you to just switch us back!"
The AC had brought the temperature in the truck down to where it was almost habitable. Time to go. I grabbed hold of the gearshift knob, "I don't know, Joey. I think the name Joey really suits you, Joey. You got this whole 'Joey' thing going on ......... Joey."
"Stop it!"
"Joey! ..... Joey-Joey-Joey! ..... Joey-Joey-Joey-Joey-Joey-Joey-J- OOWWWWWW!!!"
I rubbed the side of my head, "Jesus! That was a real punch."
Grandma inspected her knuckles, grinning smugly, "Hey, I was just getting into the spirit of things around here. Why should you two have all the fun?"
Exiting the parking lot I stopped at the little glass walled hut and handed the old guy the ticket that she passed to me. Then three rumpled ones. She shouted across me to him, "Hi Larry. How you been?"
"Still waiting for an answer to my proposal," smiled the guard. He was ancient, liver-spotted, one hand tremoring slightly. He would have looked a lot better if he abandoned his attempt at a combover- a few forlorned strands limply traversing his bald dome.
Grandma offered him a toothy Katherine Hepburn grin, "But Darling, I gave you my answer."
"I meant the right answer."
"C'mon, Larry. You're only seventy-five. You don't want to marry an old broad like me ............ I'll tell you what though. It looks like I'll be here a lot these next couple of weeks, so if I run into you in the cafeteria again, it'll be my treat this time."
He was all smiles, "I usually get my lunch from two to three."
"It's a date then. All right Slick, I'll see you around," she said, which was my cue to hit the gas pedal and pull us out onto the boulevard.
"You should go out with him," Joey teased.
"Who, Larry? Naw, I've talked to him enough to know we wouldn't really fit together. He's lonely, we B.S. a little, and that's about it..."
I asked her, "So what's this story about you having been a guy? Is that for real?"
"Sure is. I was a man for a year. The same exact spell I used on you two. Heck, I wouldn't put you through anything I wasn't willing to go through myself."
"But there's a big difference there. You were 'willing'. Him and I weren't. I understand you might have had good reasons for what you did, but I can't help seeing the way you sprung it on us as a serious lapse in ethics for someone I always looked up to when it came to moral matters. I sure didn't get my morality from Papa, with all his talk about 'grey areas' and his swag-dealing cumpari. It's like, I mean-"
I stopped, suddenly noticing a pair of small hands with painted nails hanging in the air in front of me. They were my hands. I had been gesturing frantically to articulate my point. I'd been back with the family one day and I was in full atsa-spicy-meatball mode. This always happened when I came here, a habit that only subsided after I got back to the staid Midwest, and started to notice how people were watching my hands---with a weird half-grin on their face---instead of listening to what I was saying...
"So who did you swap with," asked Joey, "And why for so long?"
"That was on the advice of our mentor, Sally. You can't learn much in a month. But a year, just the idea of it has a certain weight, emotionally you sort of decide to settle in. And the guy was a warlock named Cyrus McMahon. We were buddies. We were young, younger than you two are, and magic was our cause, or religion, practically our drug. It was so exciting, trying out every spell that came along. I even flew on a broomstick, which is about the stupidest thing any witch ever did. It hurts! But anyway, our swap was a one year arrangement, from Solstice to Solstice."
"And what did you do all that time?" I asked.
"I spent Cyrus's money. Or that's what it felt like to me, but when we swapped back he chided me for being so frugal. He was loaded. He went off to my little job, like it was gonna be some great adventure, but got tired of that pretty quick. Started playing the market with my money, parlaying it. Like those shares in the Haloid Mimeograph Company, back before they changed their name to Xerox. I learned a lot, had some great times as a man, but toward the end I was more than ready to going back to being female. And as it turns out we did swap back a bit early. The silly goose went and got herself pregnant!"
"Holy crap," said Joey. "So what did you do about that?"
"You're here, aren't you?"
We both cried, "Dad?!"
"Yep. And that's another thing you're never telling him! But the father---your Grandpa---turned out to be a wonderful man. He was quite smitten with Cerie, who for obvious reasons couldn't commit to a long-term relationship."
"What a bitch though, sticking you with that!"
"It wasn't her fault. She didn't even want to go on a date with a man. I was the one who said 'try it, and see what happens'-" Grandma threw her head back and laughed.
"So did Grandpa know about any of this?" I asked.
"None of it, at first. He didn't even know he was going to be a father. I wasn't about to saddle some stranger with responsibilities he didn't want, and marriage sure wasn't in my plans. I figured I could take care of a kid by myself. But he tracked me down, showed up at my door with flowers. And somehow as I was explaining him why I wasn't in love with him---because I didn't know him---and giving him enough of a magic show to convince him it was all true, we just hit it off. Started dating. He really knew how to make me feel like a woman again, which I needed at that point. We got married for good reasons, and not just to keep Josepho from being a bastard."
"Well that sure didn't work," snorted Joey.
Grandma sighed."I know, Honey."
"Actually, that's something I've kind of been wondering about. About Papa," I said hesitantly. When Grandma nodded for me to go ahead, I said, "Well to put it bluntly, how did a woman like you have a kid who turned out like him?"
"It's simple, really. I tried to raise a perfect human being," she said woefully. She did her yogic breathing thing---inhaling deep, exhaling slow---and said, "You two know most of my philosophies, right? And how I, uh, can tend to lecture?"
"You're not that bad," I said.
"Well I was then. I was out to save the world. To show people a better way to be. And I thought the best place to start was with this child, that I could teach, and who would go out and teach others. Everything I did was a growing experience for him, an instruction. When he was scared, when he was tired, and especially when he was angry or aggressive. He wanted a Davey Crockett popgun, he got a lecture about the Hopi Indians and their peaceable ways, and a nice Hopi beadworking kit. I wasn't letting him just be a kid, a boy. And by the time I realized what I was doing, it was too late. He had dug in like a mule!" She shook her head in remorse, "His rebellion took the form of becoming exactly the kind of people I used to point out to him. The greedy, the closed-minded, the arrogant. We weren't like them. But I couldn't see my own arrogance. I've grown up a lot since then, but for Jojo ........ well you don't get a second chance at being a good parent."
"Sure you do," said Joey. "Uncle Angelo and aunt Toni turned out kind of okay."
Grandma brightened, "Thank you, I guess they did at that. Josepho was nine when Angelo came along. By then I wasn't such a fanatic, so strident about everything."
"And you make a wonderful grandmother."
"Oh, stop!" barked Grandma Rosa, but we could tell she loved it.
We stopped at a tiny booth in the parking lot of a strip mall, where Grandma had keys made for both me and Joey. One for the lock in the doorknob, a heavier one for the deadbolt. They worked for both front and back doors. The man working there---who could have been Larry's brother---asked her if she wanted to go to the dog races with him.
I thought about putting mine with my truck key, but three keys seemed like a lot of pokey metal to put down my bosom. I dumped them in my purse. Would snag that key chain I had seen in the kitchen junk drawer- a brass bat with BACARDI embossed on it.
The intersection of Einstein Blvd. and Hudson was known for its ridiculous number of fast food places. I wanted to stop, but with so many choices we were past them before I could decide. Jeez, I was hungry...
In a somewhat seedy neighborhood a mile from our house, I dropped Joey and Grandma off in front of the family business. Il Vesuvio was a mostly unremarkable structure, except for the big kitschy fake volcano above the entrance. I waited to make sure they got the Lincoln started, but then Joey hopped out and went into the restaurant, so I took off. I arrived home ahead of them, leaving the driveway for them to use. Somehow I found a spot on the street only six houses down from ours. I hoofed it up the sidewalk- past the Di Giacomo's house, the Feingold's house- designations I recalled from childhood but who could say who lived in them now?
It was good to see that see Mrs. Pirelli was still around, as fat as ever, out watering her marigolds. I waved and bid her boun pomeriggio, good afternoon, but I guessed Joy wasn't yet forgiven for that long ago Christmas when she and her faux-satanist headbanger friends put the firecrackers in the Pirelli's Nativity scene...
I went in, opened all the windows, turned on fans, used the bathroom, took another shower. When I got out I discovered that Joy's clothes stunk pretty bad. I decided that her jeans passed the sniff test (barely) but nothing else I'd had on did. I changed into her other pair of panties, and her other bra- a red lacy thing that I'll have to admit felt pretty good. A certain sense of security or something to how it fit. When I pulled her clean tank top on I was startled to see myself looking like I'd gained a cup size.
Joey and Grandma got home about a half hour after me. Joey had a large styrofoam carryout that even with the lid closed smelled so good my mouth watered. He sat, popped it open, revealing the last third of what had been a huge sandwhich, fried italian sausage, bell pepper and onion on a sourdough hoagie roll. He hefted it and tore off a huge bite.
"Where'd you get that?" I asked, even as the answer came to me. That roll was obviously from Cosimo's, our supplier, and maybe the best damn bakery on the planet.
"Eddie Juarez made it for me right there in the kitchen, while he told me about all the broads he was bangin' and how much they all love his big twelve inch dick. Interesting conversations you guys have..."
"Eddie's an extreme case," I laughed, thinking of what an earful my sister must have got. Our opening cook was ridiculously sex-crazed & raunchy around men---to a point where my father had to just tell him to shut up---while he favored women with a droopy-eyed courtliness and creepy insincere charm, like a badly degraded twelfth generation Ricardo Montalban clone. I shrugged, "But you got to admit he makes a great eye-tie sausage sandwich. Could I have a bite?"
He slid the styrofoam box on the table away from me, "Maybe you should get in your truck and go get one. But oh, gee, that's right ........ You're not really welcome in there."
"I wouldn't be bragging about that if I was you."
He poked the last huge chunk of the sandwich into his mouth with his fingers, as if this proved something. It affected my gag reflex to see "my" mouth being stuffed with that much food, and I worried about him doing a Mama Cass right here in front of us while he was in my body, but he managed to chew and swallow it, his eyes bulging.
"We got anything to drink in here?" he asked as he opened the old fridge and looked around. He closed it, opened the freezer compartment above it, "Or maybe some frozen juice- Ugh, gross!"
"What?" asked Grandma.
"The top of this 'frigerator. It's disgusting!"
"Well then clean it," said Grandma testily. I think she too was kind of mad that Joey hadn't gotten us anything. It wouldn't have cost him anything, and with the lunch rush about over Eddie would have been happy to make sandwiches for the three of us. All he'd had to do was ask.
He startled. "Oh. Of course."
"And please be careful with Bruno there..."
Bruno? I didn't know the thing had a name. I always thought of the large porcelain cookie jar as "the scary rabbit". It's the source of my earliest remembered nightmares. I wasn't sure how our family had aquired it, but it had been made in the 1930's in Dresden Germany, and according to my father was extremely valuable, thanks to the factory that made it having being bombed into rubble along with the rest of the city toward the end of World War II ............ In one of our phone conversations Papa had bragged of he was going to "clean up" with it when the t.v. program The Antiques Roadshow came to Princeton, but he had returned home with it, and all he'd say about the matter afterward was: "They were a bunch of assholes". So I didn't know if it was in fact worth anything. But I did know this was one sinister cookie jar!
Vaguely spherical, with a removeable top section, Bruno wore a cute little argyle vest and a cute little misshapen hat between his ears, and a pitiless stare that said he would just as soon kill you as look at you. It didn't scare me as much as it did when I was a kid, but this unholy offspring of Disney's White Rabbit and the Terminator still creeped me out.
"He's kind of greasy. I'll clean him, too," Joey said as he set Bruno carefully down on the drainboard. He grabbed a spray bottle of Orange Kleenzit and pulled the trigger until he had saturated the top of the refrigerator. He mopped it all up with an immense wad of paper towels, turning and refolding it whenever it turned nasty, then lobbed it in a high arc into the wastebasket, pumping his fist when it went in.
"Thank you nipote," smiled Grandma, and shot me a glance. I'd seen it too, and grinned back at her.
He had missed the dozen or so brown streaks that all his spritzing had sent running down the side. Rather than burst Joey's bubble one of us would get it later. He was beaming with the same air of profound self-congratulation that Dad displayed whenever he did the smallest amount of housework.
God, I thought, he's such a guy! Maybe he actually is transgender.
Then it occurred to me that "he's such a guy"---viewing stereotypical male behavior as if it belonged to some other species---was pretty damn transgendered in itself. And when did I start sitting with my legs together and angled sideways like this?
Grandma had compared this month I would be spending as a female to living in Japan for a while, adopting the local customs but with no real changes to my core self. Did she even know what she was doing? An old top 40 song from the early 80's popped into my mind: Oh I'm turning yes I'm turning 'cuz I'm turning yes I'm turning- Turning Japanese I think I'm turning Japanese I really think so. Turning Japanese I think I'm turning Japanese I really think so. Turning Japanese I think I'm turning Japanese-
Grandma Rosa dug a little white tube out of her purse, uncapped it and ran it over her lips. It was Chapstick, but it reminded me. I asked her (turning Japanese I think I'm-) if she could teach me to use makeup.
"Sure," she said. "Bring me what you've got."
Joey laughed, "This I have to see!"
"No you don't have to. Go watch t.v. or something," said Grandma. She turned, glanced up at the clock on the wall, and jumped up, "Oh, the t.v.! And it's almost on, too."
She squeezed my shoulder, "Sorry Darlin', I swear we'll do this right after my show. You kids want to watch the idiot box with me?"
The kitchen's old rotary phone must have finally given up the ghost. It had been replaced with a cordless model. I grabbed the handset, took it and the phone book with me as we all headed for the living room.
Joey took Dad's chair. Fine, let him have it. Me and Grandma sat on the couch. I asked, "You feel like pizza Grandma?"
"That sounds good. I don't feel like turning on the oven. Zito's makes a decent pie, they deliver."
I made the call. The commercials ended, replaced by the thunder of rocking guitars, a rapid montage of Las Vegas sights. I turned to Grandma, "CSI?"
She grinned a bit sheepishly, "I know. It doesn't seem like me, does it? My friend Birda got me hooked on it. But hey, I like it."
I smiled and nodded noncommittally. My problem with CSI was that while I would start out fairly interested the closer the CSI team got to solving the mystery, the less I seemed to care. They were all just so grim and earnest. But the program itself hadn't been my reason for wanting to watch t.v. with Grandma. Seeing my father looking so awful today had got me thinking about mortality. Not mine so much as his, and Grandma's. She was eighty-something, and I lived five states away. How many more opportunities would I have to just hang out with her?
A casino bigshot was found murdered in his mansion, sprawled on the marble floor after he took a gainer off an inside balcony. There were some irregularities at the crime scene. A whole lot of talcum powder, and the fact that this obese, middle aged man was wearing only a very large diaper. Not adult incontinence pants, but a larger version of a cotton baby diaper, secured by an oversized safety pin, its clasp a cute little yellow plastic ducky. As they broke for the first batch of commercials the camera zoomed in on the plastic ducky and the music swelled ominously.
"What is going on here?" laughed Joey.
"Looks to me like a case of adult infantilism," said Grandma.
"He was turning into a baby? God, I hope I don't get that."
"Did you just really say that?" I asked incredulously, wondering if this body swap could have damaged his mind somehow. And if his, then what about mine?
A little farther into the episode a secret door in the wall was found, beyond which lie an elaborate nursery with giant baby bottles, a giant talcum powder shaker, a giant crib with a giant Mother Goose mobile hanging over it, all clearly intended for the casino executive.
When my sister accused the show's writers of being on LSD or something, Grandma briefly explained the whole 'adult baby' fixation to him. He was flabbergasted. There was a hoarseness in his voice, an almost hysterical quality, as he tried to wrap his head around the most mind-blowingly strange thing he'd ever heard of- "That is just sick! You're kidding me, right?"
"No, I've heard of it too. With some of them it's a sexual fetish, but for others it's just a thing they do. They say there's a part of them that just feels like they're really an infant."
"That's called being stone fucking crazy! Why not say you're a purple-spotted goony bird while you're at it?!"
"People are funny about age," said Grandma, "Just about everyone over forty wishes they were twenty-two again. And hell, I wouldn't mind being fifty-"
"That's just wanting to look better! It's not rattles and pacifiers a-a-and ........ HE WAS WEARING A FUCKING DIAPER, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE! I'm sorry, that is just weird! That is just so ....... god damn....... weird! Are you trying to tell me that isn't weird?"
Having personally felt the sting of the righteous opprobrium of bigots, I didn't want to flog anyone else with that---or at least anyone harmless---simply because I didn't understand why they liked what they did. I said, "Not as weird as you're making it. Now let's let Grandma watch her show."
Our dinner came, and Grandma and I scarfed down. Zito's pizza really was excellent. Unlike the chain places, they weren't afraid to use a little oregano. I had been wondering if a medium one was going to be enough, but halfway through my third slice I realized it was going to be my last.
"Ewwwww gross," hooted Joey as the CSI guys questioned the soft-spoken motherly owner of a shop called Forever Baby, "They got a whole store for baby weirdos!"
Sated and sleepy, I grabbed a large throw pillow off the couch and watched the rest of the show lying on the carpet on my stomach, like I used to as a kid, watching Hunter after school. I had to shift slightly on the pillow I had under me, but all my other thoughts were no longer coming to such a halt every time I noticed my tits.
Something was itching that I didn't want to scratch in front of Gram, and especially in front of Joey. Right on the flap, a spot where if I moved my finger a few millimeters to the right it would go right in. In me ......... Odd that I hadn't even tried it. What would that be like? Or what if it was Ricky's finger? Suddenly I really wanted Ricky's finger there. My thighs parted (Turning Japanese I think I'm turning Japanese-) and I pressed my crotch hard against the floor. Against a nice little protruding seam in the fabric of my jeans...
Oh damn it, though ....... I HAD to get in touch with Ricky! Monday was just too far away. It looked like I would have to call him on the phone. But what would I say?
"Hey Ricky! Guess who this is. No! Come on, dude. Guess!"
Okay, not that. That was dumb. Then how about...
"Hello Mr. Silverman? You don't know me, or at least you don't think you do, but do you remember that old Avengers episode you and your partner Teddy watched last week? The one with the mind-swapping machine?"
That had potential. Unless there was a way to do this without even mentioning my transformation, as Grandma had so strenuously advised...
"Hi Ricky? This is Joy, Teddy's sister. Yes he's sitting right here, but what happened is, he has laryngitis really bad. Here: *Hhhhhhrrraaaaagggghhuh*. Yes, that was him, trying to say hello. I know, it's awful! But he can hear you, and we have a pad of paper here, and I'll tell you what he's writing..."
Could I do all that, that whole elaborate deception? I despised dishonesty, and wasn't a very good liar. Especially with Ricky. Our whole partnership was supposed to be built on trust, and my guilt over violating that trust usually gave me away...
But maybe I could enlist the help of someone who was adept at lying. It would be risky, but I thought I saw a way. I would offer Joey payment so disproportionate to the simple thing I wanted him to do that he would have to be nuts not to do it for me.
It had seemed like such a good idea at the time.
In the kitchen I found a canister of some sort of generic iced tea mix. Threw a spoonful into a half a glass of cold water. Stirred it, filled the glass with ice cubes. Let it sit until it cooled down.
"God, that show was weird," muttered Joey as he walked in, and looked in the fridge as if he expected something to be in there that hadn't been there before.
When we were eating, Grandma and I had apparently been on the same wavelength about offering Joey any pizza. But if it helped to sweeten the coming deal...
"You want a slice?"
He grinned---Oh hell yeah!---and as he dug in I said, "I have a proposal for you. I know what a bitch it can be to not have transportation. Well I won't loan you my truck, but what I will do is take you anywhere you need to go, within a fifty mile radius, whenever you need to go there. Not once, but ten times."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. All you have to do is talk to my boyfriend for on the phone for like a minute, and pretend you're me. Say 'Hi', tell him things have been just totally crazy around here with Dad in the hospital, so you couldn't call before, but you're fine. Tell him you love him, or if you can't do that, when he says he loves you say: 'You back times a million, Pookie'."
He shrugged, "I can tell him 'I love you'. I'm just passing it along."
"Cool! He'll want to talk, so tell him we're leaving for the hospital again right now, but you'll call him or e-mail him as soon as you can. You might want to emphasize e-mail. When he says 'kiss kiss', you tell him 'kiss kiss kiss'---that's three times---and hang up. Can you do all that?"
He paraphrased what I had said, quite convincingly, adding Grandma's doing fine and sends you her love, which was a nice touch. He said, "And you'll really take me anywhere I want to go, any time?"
"Well, not to some club in Manhattan at midnight."
"Not to Manhattan?"
"Not at midnight, and nowhere if I'm sleeping, but sure. I'll get you through the Holland Tunnel and onto a subway."
"Twelve rides," he demanded suddenly.
"Come on, don't be ........ Well okay, twelve rides."
He smiled nastily, and after a pause demanded, "Fifteen!"
That heavy skillet on the drainboard, the element of surprise.
No, better not; that's my head I'd be cracking. Fucking asshole! I should've known better. I got up and started to walk from the room.
"Hey, come on. I was just teasing. Ten rides is fine."
"I'm not in a teasing mood," I warned him, "I really, really need to contact Ricky."
"I hear you. And I really need to be able to get around. So seriously, it's a great deal for me. Thanks!"
I punched in the number and handed him the phone's handset. A moment later he said, "Hi, Ricky?"
I could hear my boyfriend practically shout my name, sounding very happy. Weather was discussed, Ricky had heard about New Jersey's unseasonable heat wave, the news reports back there making it sound like we were dropping dead left and right out here. Joey was standing differently, more upright- like I did, I suppose. He was even tugging at his beard from time to time, right where I did, toward the back of his jawline. Wow he's good, I thought.
I was smiling, participating vicariously at their conversation: So wonderful to hear your voice, you sound great ....... I know ...... I know ....... I miss you so much, too-
-until he radically deviated from the agreed upon script. "Can you come out here maybe? No, I mean tonight. Just drop everything and drive. Or catch the next flight into Newark, and I'll come get you in my truck. I just really need to see you..."
"NO!" I gasped, shaking my head furiously. What the hell was he saying?! Sure I would have loved to have seen Ricky, but how could I when were body-swapped?
Joey smiled crazily as he got up and walked across the room, the phone to his ear. "I know it's tough to get away, but I really need you here. I need my Daddy ........... No not my father, he's all sick and icky. I need my Daddy. You're my Daddy. My Pookie Daddy. And I'm a little baby!"
When I jumped up and tried to grab the phone I found myself at a greater disadvantage than I would have imagined possible. He was so much taller and stronger---and with a longer reach---that he kept it away from me easily. I thought speed might be on my side, but he kept managing to dodge me. And when I finally did latch onto it he just yanked it straight up out of my grip!
"Hold on a second," he laughed, "My stupid sister is trying to grab the phone. No, I have no idea why. Maybe 'cuz girls are stupid! Well, aren't they? Well then you're stupid! I'm soooooo glad we're faggots and got dicks an' stuff! And that I'm a baby ........... No, I mean a baby! A little bitty baby-baby, all helpless and everything goin' goo goo, gah gah..."
"God damn you!" I hissed.
Joey shook his head at me. In a swift move he put his foot against my stomach, and---before I could grab onto it---shoved hard. It was only sheer luck that I didn't fall!
He laughed at my awkward flight across the room, "What do you mean stop kidding around? I'm a baaaaaaaby! Since like forever, that's since when! I'm wearing a diaper right now. I just LOVE to poop my diapers, and have poop on my butt-"
I was about to launch myself at him, kicking and clawing, when I saw a far easier solution.
"So come down here. Pweeeeeez, Daddies?! Babykins need Daddykins in him butty-kins. To fuck my poopy baby butt! 'Cuz if you don't, well then hey ......... There's a lot of cute sailors who could really go for a big sissy homo in a diaper!" he threatened, and began to sing, "In the Naaaavy! You can sail the seven seas; In the Naaaaavy! You can catch a gay disease- Hello?! HEY!"
I had unplugged the phone base from the wall. I shouted, "You stupid bastard! What the hell was that?"
Joey couldn't stop laughing, "Oh God, oh God, oh God! You shoulda seen the look on your face! And your boyfriend ............ he was just freaking out!"
I felt sick to my stomach. The sheer random spitefulness of it! It had been an outrageously good deal I had offered him, but like an idiot trading a hundred dollar bill for a piece of candy, the chance to do something cruel and fucked right there and then had overridden all other considerations...
I stared at Joey. "What is wrong with you?"
"You mean you didn't like that," he sniggered.
I sat down heavily. Slammed my fist down on the table. The little bones in the side of my hand flared with a pain that was oddly gratifying and calming. I said wearily, "Grandma tells me to try to understand you. She talks about how understanding leads to compassion, which opens the way for communication, which brings even greater understanding. Respect and love. Well that's just wonderful, but it assumes both sides want the same thing. And when you do shit like this it's obvious that you don't. So fuck it! It would be nice if Grandma's plan could work, but you're a total lost cause. And you can forget about getting any rides from me!"
"Oh no, terrible! Like I'd have to come to you when I want to go anyplace, and you'd be all in my business about where I'm going and why! You think I need you for that? That I can't take care of myself? I don't need your stupid rides. I can take the bus and the MetRail. That truck should be mine to use, anyway. But you make this big fucking drama out of it, how much better you are than me, hiding the key between your titties like I'm some thief!"
"Is that what this is about? That you can't drive? You put yourself in that situation, when over and over you risked not just your own useless ass, but the lives of everyone else on the road. But by some logic straight out of hell, you blame everybody else. You blame the State, or maybe those party poopers who came and pried you out of your Toyota with the Jaws of Life. And then you get mad at me, so you try to undermine my relationship, the man I've been with for three years now and hope to marry! You're fucked, you know that? You are just plain fucked!"
"Wasn't much of a relationship if it can't handle one joke. Don't be such a damn baby!" he scoffed, and then his hand flew up to cover his mouth---OOPS!---an insufferably cutesy gesture.
"You know all about relationships, huh? Id love to be able to mess with your relationship like that, and tell your boyfriend you're gonna go fuck a bunch of sailors ............. But that's right, I can't. Because you don't have one. This last guy couldn't stand your weird bullshit any better than the rest of them, could he? How long did it take him to figure out that he was better off using his goddamn hand than having you for a girlfriend?"
"You fucking cunt!" he shouted, and stomped out, and up the stairs.
My elation over my victory lasted about ten seconds. Because it was actually a pyrrhic victory. I had proven I could be more vicious than him, but what horrible kinds of things did that prove?
It was all so fucked up. Joy and me .......... Papa in the hospital, dying with hate in his heart .......... And now Ricky---the most wonderful and probably the sanest thing in my life---was sitting in a condo 900 miles away, thinking God knows what about me. I slumped over onto the table and started to cry...
Joey and I avoided each other the rest of the day. Grandma was in her room, a piece of notebook paper with DO NOT DISTURB scrawled on it taped to her door. I felt totally drained. It was an early night for me.
.
when i was 14 yr old i decided i was going to be a poet
i hd seen the film
Beat Hotel about young
american misfits
livin in paris in the mid-1950's
a life or freedom
intellectual passion
creation
+ krazy gone fun.
i was impressed mostofall
w/ the allen ginsberg character-
this brilliant poet + revolutionary mystic loonybeard
YES
an openly gay man who spoke unashamedly of the virtues of
love
tenderness
a gentle heart
and yet who was in no sense
one of them embarrassing swishy kinda queer
who spoke of a no-bull lineage
of saints / visionaries / mad artists
that he was
YES
plugged into
& was totally fearless & honest in his dealings w/ narrow minded squares.
and with god on his side
(a god who said that sexuality too
in all its myriafold humanifestations
was in the image of god)
he was in all this
what I wanted to be
here in radiant cool
crazy nightmare
zen new jersey nowhere
.
This was my "bohemian" phase, and it lasted through the spring and summer of '89; until I realized what crap my poetry was; and also found that I wasn't actually brave enough to live totally openly gay in the neighboorhood, at my school, or especially within our family. Not that I ever again denied it, this would've been pointless since I'd confessed the matter rather publically, but I was not the fearless crusader I had imagined I would be; an in-your-face Superfag calmly refuting ignorance with my Truth and Wisdom. Other gay and lesbian students (ones without a head full of shit-mystic intellectual flapdoodle...) totally showed me up in this department.
But for that one summer, as I planned my emergence as this glorious Dharma Bum, I discovered that I had a new best friend living in the same house. We had battled each other all through early childhood; kid's stuff about toys destroyed and who tattled on who, that all suddenly seemed pointless to us. Because now, at 12 and 14, we were sophisticated.
Joy thought I was a genius and a great soul. She listened adoringly to my stinking free verse and was my confidant about my homosexuality, thinking this was a most exotic and rebellious thing for me to do. For once in our lives, we were close. We looked into each others eyes, open and unafraid, seeing the goodness there. We wrote poems and stories together, none of which came out so hot, and did drawings together, which sometimes did...
But our favorite thing to collaborate on was collage. At first they were the usual gridlike arrays of images that all kids slap together, following some theme we had agreed on. But then we stumbled into the notion of photorealism in our collages- cutting everything out as carefully as possible; making sure that angles and perspectives lined up so that these objects and people actually seemed to belong together in space and not like they were clipped from separate sources.
Even after our partnership dissolved, we each did well in our art classes using this difficult gimmick; but none seemed quite as inspired as those we'd done together during that ten weeks. The one I have hanging in a frame at home gets commented on a lot, a gallery owner asking me if the artist might want to sell his stuff at her place. He's dead, I had told her...
All that summer we talked, baring our adolescent souls. Complaining about our hard-ass jerk of a father, and wondering what his problem was with Joy all of a sudden. Discussing our likes and dislikes in music, and what actors and/or actresses we thought were sexy. And though there wasn't a lot of overlap with our being in different schools, about all our friends and enemies.
My archnemesis at the time was a half-crazy juvenile delinquent named Gordy. I knew that if he and his cronies had harrassed me in Eighth grade, just for helping Coach Daniels pull them off of that little foreign exchange student, they were going to declare total jihad against me in ninth, after I came out to all and sundry. And I knew I would probably lose a few friends and gain some enemies in the process. But there was one enemy I never expected I would have...
Entering seventh grade at my Junior High, Joy fell in with a bunch of druggies. Little low-class druggies from low-class druggie families. They actually looked up to Gordy Thompson, and some of them bragged about their gang connections. And they convinced her that there was absolutely nothing cool about me being a faggot. And when she realized that if she fraternized with me at all she was going to be taunted as well---for being the sister of that fucking homo---she did what she had to to salvage her social standing, by turning around and becoming the loudest and the most mocking of my detractors.
Oh Joy, you Judas.
.
||| SUNDAY OCTOBER 5 ~~~
.
The little digital alarm clock in here said 4:19 a.m. Well that's what happens when you go to bed before eight. I got up up.
I wandered down the hall to the bathroom. The DO NOT DISTURB sign was still on Grandma's door, and she was talking in there. Or no- she was chanting something, in what sounded like a mixture of Greek and Latin. She would chant a while, stop and swear, then back up- repeating the passage that she had flubbed. It sounded like serious business whatever it was.
Downstairs, I looked in the video cabinet for something to watch. It looked like Papa had really gone on a movie buying spree.There were twice as many DVD's in here as I remembered from six years ago. One of them had fallen out as I opened the door- a police comedy starring Tom Hanks and a huge slobbering dog. It seemed like as good a way as any to quietly kill an hour and a half...
I was was having coffee in the kitchen when I heard the shower being turned on upstairs. Grandma swore by Japanese style super-hot baths, so that would be Joey.
Joey took longer than I thought he would. I had sort of forgotten about him, when he came in whistling. I bolted upright in my chair. "What the hell did you do?!"
He rubbed his smoothly shaven cheek, "It was really bugging me!"
"How could you just cut my beard off?"
"Well first I took a scizzors and trimmed it as much as I could-"
"Goddamn it, that's not funny."
"What can I say? It was itching."
"My beard doesn't itch."
"Are you telling me what I felt and what I didn't? That is so like you. You completely deny my reality."
"You didn't even ask me!"
"Calm the fuck down, wouldja? It'll grow back in a couple of months."
"Try about a year, to get it like I had it. It doesn't fill in evenly..."
"Gee. I didn't know that," he grinned, happy to learn that he had screwed me over even better than he'd planned.
"Thank you," I smiled calmly.
He sounded apprehensive; "For what?"
I got up, rummage through the kitchen junk drawer. Found a big shiny pair of sewing scizzors. "For having absolutely no regard for my wishes. It gives me permission to do this..."
I layed my hand flat on the table top and clipped the nail off of my left pinky!
"Come on!" yelped Joy, "Those aren't EVEN long!"
I finished my left hand, started on my right. "Yes they are. Besides, what's the big deal? They'll grow back. Unlike my beard, unless I wanted to wear some stupid thing out of a costume shop, you at least have the option of buying fingernails-"
"I hate acrylic fingernails. They're so phony! Those there are mine, I grew them. They're part of me..."
"Not anymore they're not," I smiled, snipping off the last one, "You know, you're right. We're going to be in each other's bodies for a whole month. We might as well get comfortable."
"You're such an asshole!"
"Hey, I learned from the best. Now that was for that bullshit on the phone last night," I said, holding up my hand for inspection. "But you know what else drives me nuts? These stupid bangs!"
I turned the old chrome toaster sitting on the table, and using it for a mirror, raised the scizzors to my forehead.
"Okay, stop!" he whined, "I'm sorry!"
"A little late for that," I smile as I start to cut. I knew I should have a professional do this, but this was just too much fun. I started snipping, "And they really do bug me. Always getting in my eyes."
"That hair is nowhere near your eyes!"
"Are you denying my reality?"
Suddenly issuing a loud and terrifying insane roar, he jumped me!
I got my other hand around the scizzors' pointy end the instant before he grabbed them. He pulled, lifting me out of the chair! Joey tried to shake me loose, swinging me in a wide arc. My ass hit something, a chair fell over loudly. He put his other hand against my face and pushed!
I was about to bite the hand that was smooshing my face when I heard: "Please you two, I was up until almost five, and I really needed more sleep. Could you for God's sake keep it down a little-"
When Grandma stepped through the entry and saw us locked in what looked like a fight to the death with these scizzors, she screamed!
I let go. I don't know what Joey did, but they went flying in the direction of the kitchen sink. Bruno the Nazi Rabbit was still sitting on the drainboard where Joey had left him yesterday. The scizzors hit him right in the polka-dot bow tie, knocking his top part off its base. It was a fall of only about fourteen inches into the empty sink, but from the way he shattered when he landed in there ears first, it might as well have been fourteen stories.
Joey and I looked at each other, our jaws hanging slack and eyes bugged out, and then turned toward Grandma.
She started to say something but then didn't. Walked out. This was not good.
"Oh shit, what did you do?"
"Me? You're the one who let go of them!"
Joey went over to the sink, "Maybe we can glue .............. Yeeeeesh! Nevermind..."
We heard Grandma coming slowly down the stairs. Clump-CLUMP! Clump-CLUMP! Clump-CLUMP!
She paused in the doorway, pulling a suitcase on wheels. "That's it, I'm out of here!"
"Where are you going?"
"I was up all night trying to come up with a healing spell for your father. It's some tough magic, they have to be custom fit, and I found out there's no way I can do it by myself. I'm going to stay with my coven sister Birda. Sister Vivian's going to stay there too. It's blissfully uncomplicated being with them. Very little drama..."
"Aw Grandma, don't be sore."
"I hurt all over. But believe me, you two are the least of my problems. Your negativity and bitchiness makes this spell impossible to perform here, but I would've had to do this anyway. The three of us will need to chant this around the clock. From now until ........ well however this turns out."
"How did you get packed so fast?" asked Joey.
"I've had this packed since I phoned you. I knew it might turn out like this." Grandma sighed. She dug into her handbag, "Here Joey. Here's a hundred for groceries. And I guess I'd better make this fair..."
"I don't need it," I said as she shoved the crisp Benjamin toward me.
"Then give it to charity. Or maybe you can find a replacement for Bruno there. Something friendlier would be nice, I'll leave that up to your artistic sensibilities. I just wish ........... Enrico brought that ugly thing back from the war with him."
"Oh no!" I gasped, "I'm so sorry..."
She shrugged, "It's good to have a little reminder of amitya now and then. Nothing material lasts, you have to let go of all of it eventually. I'll be in touch. Try not to kill each other. I love you kids dearly, but .............................................................. sheesh!"
And then she was gone.
.
.
.
To be continued...
.
I knew that living back at home for a few weeks would be kind of strange, but shortly after my arrival it got stranger than I'd ever thought possible. As it turned out my grandmother was a genuine witch who---tired of our constant bickering---put a transcorporation spell on my sister Joy and me, body-swapping us...
On Saturday my gravely ill father cursed me as a godless murderess and banished me from his life forever. Then Joy (who we were now calling Joey...) thought it would be funny to try and sabotage my relationship with my life partner Ricky, which led to the frantic punch-out between us that cause the death of Grandma Rosa's sinister antique cookie jar & drove her to go stay elsewhere.
By Sunday morning the situation had completely fallen apart, and we still had 26 days to go until we'd be returned to our own bodies. Would my brother and I murder each other before then? Or would we somehow learn to...
.
||| SUNDAY OCTOBER 5 (continued...)
Joey and I spent the rest of the morning dodging each other. I think we were both a bit alarmed over that fight we'd had at sunrise. By how intense it had got.
When he came into the kitchen I grabbed my plate of Eggo waffles and slipped out the front door, ate sitting on the battered old oak porch swing we had hanging out there. And when I came back inside he abandoned whatever he was watching on t.v. and went upstairs. For a while he was making a lot of noise hammering on something up there, which bugged the hell out of me. But after he fell silent this was bugging me too. Just knowing he was up there, doing whatever, with that dopey look on his face.
I was about to trade my kimono bathrobe for the outfit I'd had on last night, to hop in my truck and drive someplace...
When Joey came rushing down the stairs and made a break for the door. I asked him where he was off to, and before he could start ranting about this being none of my business I added, "I just want to know if you'll be gone long, is all."
"Probably. Depends on if anything good's playing at the 16."
The clock on the wall said a quarter to nine. I told him, "You realize the first movie usually isn't until around noon, right?"
"Well no shit, Sherlock!" he snorted, "The bus'll get me to the mall about the time it opens, I can poke around the shops for an hour or two. I really need to get some sunglasses. And then I guess I'd better drop in on Papa. So I'll probably be home around dinnertime. Or not. I hear Jenny Thurston is back from New York. She had a kid back in July, is living with her mom. I might go see how she's doing. See ya!"
Jenny was the one person who had managed to stay friends with both Joy and me all through high school, after our schism back in the ninth grade. But then the brainy basketball player had always had a talent for this sort of thing, moving effortlessly between the various student cliques. She'd never been much of a partier, and with this baby was probably even less of one; and of all the former associates he could be looking up I was glad it was her. I lifted my palm, "Okay, see ya then. And I should probably go drop in on Dad too..."
But not today, I grinned as I watched Joey loping down the sidewalk toward the bus stop. I needed at least one day to recover before I ventured back into that hospital room, and with the house to myself today I would be able to kick back and relax around here.
I wasn't sure how many more times I'd try to visit my father. If all my attempts went like yesterday's it wouldn't be many, but I would take any small improvement in his disposition as a sign to press on. Or perhaps he really had written Joy off for good, and nothing I did as his ersatz daughter would appease him. And if that was the case then what was I even doing here? If all my visits did was drive him into an apoplectic rage then neither of us were benefitting from them. I could leave, maybe go down the coast and do a little gambling.
Atlantic City was no substitute for the sheer absurd spectacle of Las Vegas, but it was a lot closer. Intellectually I knew there was probably nothing to this, but I kept imagining my situation as being something like "astral projection", as if there was some invisible ectoplasmic umbilical cord between me and my own body, which I didn't want to put strain on or have it get tangled up on the corner of some building by venturing too far from where Joey was. Yet putting a little distance between us would keep me and my brother away from each other's throats...
Just about everything in the rather limited wardrobe the swap had left me with needed washing. I tossed it into our old avacado green washing machine and washed it on MEDIUM. This cotton kimono Grandma had loaned me was lightweight and comfortable, much like the one you'd find me lounging around in at home on a lazy weekend day; except for being smaller, and a good deal more colorful than my own rather monkish one; these explosions of cherry blossoms crowding its night sky surface being close enough in color to satisfy Grandma's fuchsia fetish.
The Times sports section reminded me that the Mets were playing the Padres at Mission Park today at noon. There were things I needed to do, but it made sense to consolidate all these trips, do them tomorrow after the library opens and I finally contact Ricky on their public computers. Today I could just be lazy and screw off. Maybe watch another flick before the game started.
I sat on the floor in front of the video hutch and started looking through the movies. All the VHS cassettes from my childhood were gone, except for a set called Build Your Own Bathroom With Bob Villa- a project that Dad had been promising to get around to for years. I couldn't believe how many new DVD's my dad had aquired. They were stacked two deep in most places. He had a dozen Clint Eastwood films, the entire Band of Brothers series, the various incarnations of CIA analyst Jack Ryan, and all the Die Hard movies including the latest one- which I didn't even know was out in video yet.
Then I noticed something slightly off about all his newer titles. The cases were somewhat flimsier looking, the artwork just a touch grainy. And while they all bore the expected trademarks---Dreamworks, Paramount, New Line---each of them also said, in plain black lettering inside a tiny white legend along the bottom: CHEKA FILMS.
Oh Hell. Grisha...
The phone was ringing, sitting on the table next to the couch. I scrambled over to it, "Hello?"
"Oh good, it's you."
"Grandma?"
"Yep. Hey listen," she said quickly, "I'm really sorry if I got a little hysterical this morning. But when I saw the two of you fighting with that big butcher knife-"
"It was a scizzors," I corrected her.
"Really? Well I was half asleep. Or was until then anyway!"
"I hope you realize we weren't actually trying to stick each other with it," I said, and even as I did I had a strange twinge of doubt about this. "I uh ........ I was cutting my bangs off and Joey was trying to stop me. I was paying him back for shaving my beard off. Did you notice he did that?"
"An eye for an eye ends with everyone blind," quoted Grandma. "All I know is when I stepped into that kitchen I thought I'd made a wrong turn somewhere and wandered into the damned Roman Colosseum! And I realized right then that I needed to be here at Birda's for the spell we're doing, not just dropping in for my shifts as cantress. All of us here need to stay calm, and focused. If we keep chanting and don't break the chain we might actually have a chance with this."
"That's great! But of course when you do the hospital will take all the credit for it," I teased.
"Let them. I just want my boy alive and well. But anyway Teddi, I'm glad it's you I got ahold of. I wanted you to have the phone number here in case of emergencies, or anything major you might need to talk to me about. You got a pen and paper handy?"
I jotted down the number she read to me in the margin of the color Comics section and tore it off, along with part of Garfield's right ear. "So you're saying you don't want Joey to have this?"
"Don't start gloating now, because it's really no great accomplishment to be more considerate of other people than he is, but you are. And with your job and everything, you have a better head for what constitutes a real emergency and what doesn't. In a few days I'll give Joey this number too, but we're at such a crucial phase with this spell, I just can't risk getting dragged into some pointless chaos!"
"Do whatever you need to do. I'm really rooting for you to succeed with this thing."
"Thank you! We need all the positive energy we can get right now. I'm glad you're not the skeptic you were a couple of days ago."
"That was then. You could say I've aquired a body of evidence concerning magic since then..."
"Cute," she chuckled, "The girls'll get a kick out of that one."
"So this healing spell. Is that what you were chanting in your room at three in the morning?"
"It was. It's tough working out the pronounciation of a language no one's spoken in a couple of millennea. And I never would've got it using old Aramaic as my starting point. But Francine---an honest-to-God Salem witch, who just joined us this morning---she managed to channel a fellow who was alive back then and was willing to tutor us. Well mostly he just wanted to talk, like the disembodied tend to do. Kept going on and on about the neighbor who used to keep him up all night playing his pan pipes, or some crook of a blacksmith that overcharged him when he fixed his chariot, and then didn't even do it right. You don't want to remind someone that all the things he's bitching about turned to dust centuries ago, but sometimes you have to. To steer him back to the translating. But without Shantazmobobia, and without Francine's being able to channel him, we wouldn't have got to start. This was a huge load off my mind!"
To me their long-dead helper sounded about as authentic as Mel Brooks' 2000-Year-Old-Man routine. But I reminded myself of some of the things I had seen Grandma do. I said, "You seem like you're in a better mood than when you left here this morning."
"Oh I am, I am! And I realized I had to call you. To apologize for being so crabby, and let you know I really haven't abandoned you kids. That I'll drop in when I can. So how is it over there?"
"Pretty frosty right now. I know I'm sure pissed off! You know what started this, don't you?"
"What you were saying. He shaved off his- your beard."
I laughed humorlessly, "That? That was nothing, compared to the shit he pulled on me last night! I have to admit it was inspired, in a sick twisted kind of way. You remember that CSI episode we watched yesterday? The old guy in the diaper?"
She sighed. "Like I said before, it takes two to have a fight. These things are subjective."
"Subjective? This wasn't a fight, it was a mugging! Pearl-fucking-Harbor! Nothing subjective about that: 'TORA! TORA! TORA!' N-nyeeeeeeeeoow- BOOM!! Ratatat-tat-tat! P'koo! P'koo! P'koo! Aa-OOOOOGA! Aa-OOOOOOOOOGA! 'All hands to battle stations!' Joey got on the phone with my boyfriend and-"
"Okay, I believe you! I've seen your sister do some really rotten stuff in her time. But tell me about it later- Please! I'm sorry, I just can't abide any negativity now. This spell has to come first!"
"It's cool," I said, and it was. It wasn't as if Grandma pulled this 'I can't handle you right now' stuff very often. She had always been a thoughtful and helpful listener. Still I wished there was somebody I could tell all this to. And suddenly I laughed, "I just had a wild idea! Maybe I should write about everything that's happened to me since Friday. It'd make a hell of a story, wouldn't it? It's funny, I used to love to write, but I can't remember the last time I wrote something. Or painted, did anything creative..."
"That was a beautiful Eulogy you composed for Elizabeth. Everyone at the funeral thought so."
"That came easy. You don't have to look very hard to find good things to say about Mom. The hardest part was having to take out about half of it, getting it down to five pages. But that really isn't a lot to show for the past decade. I used to always feel sorry for people, older people who'd tell me how they 'used to be' a writer; thinking how could they give up something so rewarding?! But now I know. It just happens. Life gets busy and the next thing you know it's been ten years.."
"So maybe it could un-happen. This change in perspective might just give you the shot in the arm you needed. I wrote some of my best poems during that year I spent as a Scotsman. I was a regular Bobby Burns!"
"Yeah, maybe it could," I drawled. "There's this website where a neighbor of mine posts her stories; it's all body swaps and weird viruses from space changing people's sex. Except for the fact that it's non-fiction this'd fit right in there! I could call it-"
I stopped. Looking down I noticed that I still had one of my father's new DVD's in my hand. A filthy, battered and bleeding Bruce Willis was scowling up at me from the cover of Eat Shit And Die Hard. And now I remembered what I wanted to ask Grandma Rosa.
"Call it what?" she prompted.
"Hell I don't know ......... Say, do you know if Papa is still hanging out with The Russian?"
"Uncle Grisha? You bet he is. They're thick as thieves," she chuckled.
"Grisha's not even a real gangster. He's a phony!"
"Well of course. You'd prefer he was actually mob connected? He's been down to the hospital every day. He bought Jojo this great big bouquet shaped like a horseshoe, ugliest thing you ever saw! But you can just tell Grisha's worried sick about him. So let them play black marketeer. Hell, it's mostly all nickel and dime stuff anyway."
Nor was this "uncle" of mine really any sort of relative. But on our first meeting with this big scary funny-talking, funny-smelling foreigner (with his dark baleful eyes and his massive unruly black beard he bore an alarming resemblance to Bluto from the Popeye cartoons) he'd taken an instant shine to Joy and me, and with the mawkish sentimentality of a booze-hound had insisted that we call him Uncle. At which Papa had shot us a stern look, warning us to humor this weirdo. That here was a fixer who it would be good for our family to be on the good side of.
Like a lot of people up and down this part of the eastern seaboard, my father had always loved the idea of swag. Of saving money and sidestepping the damned government's sales tax through backdoor deals.
The trouble was that Dad never seemed to get in on the real bonanzas but mostly got rooked into buying junk. I think people knew they could sell him just about anything if they kept looking over their shoulder while they did it. Like that horribly outdated word processor he wanted to get to do the restaurant's bookkeeping on, which I saved him from buying at the last minute. And when I pointed him to an actual good deal at Best Buy later, he'd lost all interest in computers. Or those six cases of Argentine salmon that Grisha had sold him at a $1.33 a can. I didn't have the heart to tell him when I saw those same big red and yellow cans on the shelves of the 99 ¢ store a few days later...
I set the DVD down. "Grisha's selling pirated movies now?"
"Sure is. Between his weekends at the swap meet, supplying all six of Raji's liquor stores and the stops he makes with his van down along Industry Parkway, this is the best he's done for himself in a while. This isn't one of his scams that he can only pull on someone once. These are quality bootlegs and people like them. He sells them so cheap, I can't imagine what he's paying for them. Probably cost more to ship over here than they do to manufacture. It looks like our Russian's finally found his niche in the underworld."
"If the Feds don't get him. This isn't like dubbing your friends a few films off of cable."
"He's a big boy, he knows the risks."
"I hope so," I clucked. "And as weird as this sounds I can almost picture Uncle Grisha enjoying being in federal prison. Playing chess, watching his Judge Judy, bullshitting any con who will listen about jobs he's pulled off that are a whole lot heavier than anything he really ever did..."
She thought about this. "Maybe he would at that. I've never got the same story from him twice, but I don't think he's eligible for Social Security. It'd be a kind of retirement for him. And he was raised in a police state after all---someone telling him where he could go, when he could eat---so you might just be right. Will I see you around the hospital some time?"
"Definitely! Not today, but I'll be there tomorrow for sure. I can't just hide from Dad. He's the whole reason I'm here."
"That's my girl!" she said proudly, "I'll see you tomorrow morning. I love you."
"Okay. Love you Grandma-"
Between reading the Sunday paper and channel surfing between three different television preachers (all in outfits that made them look like some weird breed of superhero), I never did put a second movie on. And I wound up not watching the game either.
Passing the dining room hutch on my way back from the kitchen I caught sight of myself in the mirror behind it. I really shouldn't have taken those scizzor to my hair. I had bangs over the one side but not the other now, like Hitler. I didn't want to just lop the rest of them off, in case there was another solution. There was a salon called Sirens a few blocks away that had always given me a decent haircut as a guy. I should drop in there and see what they had to say.
Pushing the torn fringe of hair this way and that, I saw that my face still looked as pallid and burnt out as it had yesterday. I leaned in toward my reflection and moaned hungrily, "Br-a-a-a-a-a-ins!"
Okay, not funny. I decided that this was a perfect time to start experimenting with Joy's makeup. Since I was just going to hang around the house no one would see it when I screwed this up.
I went upstairs and into the bathroom. As I opened the big clear cube-shaped plastic box adorned with pop art daisies and started exploring what all Joy had in all there, I wasn't shooting for "fabulous", just marginally presentable and not strange looking.
There were various lip pencils, which I wasn't sure about the use of, but the regular lipstick seemed simple enough to put on. The one I picked had a purplish tinge to it that I didn't much like, but both "Truckstop Hooker Red" and "Pyrotechnic Pink" seemed far too bright for my pale skin. When I twisted the tube and the glossy little bullet emerged I thought: Yuck! Joy was using this. Do I really want to put it on my mouth? I'd had this same thought before when I first went to use her toothbrush, and again I had to laugh when I realized, Hey idiot, you ARE Joy! Any germs that are on this are on you too!
I might have put it on a bit thick (Too late, I remembered the trick I'd seen Mom do, where she would only put it on the top lip and then sort of kiss it onto the bottom one. Or was it the other way around?) but I was satisfied, having colored nothing more or less than I should have.
These super-thin eyebrows I was sporting almost looked like I didn't have any. I always thought Joy had looked better when they were just a bit bushy, giving her face a certain unassuming innocence .......... I chose an eyebrow pencil that was a shade or two lighter than the Magic Marker black of my hair, and carefully did one brow then the other. And now my eyelashes looked pale by comparison, my eyes too small.
This seemed like the phase of the operation that I would be most likely to botch, but luckily her tube of mascara was nearly depleted, so it didn't go on all goopy but took running the little brush over them several times to give my eyes some definition. I knew there was something Joy did to her cheeks to disguise the residual roughness from the terrible acne she'd suffered as a teen, but the whole pallet of available skin stuff and eyelid stuff seemed a bit daunting right now, and I thought I should quit while I was ahead. I was pleased to note that I only looked half as anemic as I did before. That my modest efforts had worked to bring out what was pretty about this face.
Though it was alien to apply this term to myself I recognized that pretty would be the name of the game for the next month. And really, it wasn't all that alien. Hadn't I always enjoyed looking my best? Just as pink and blue weren't really all that far apart on the total spectrum of radiation, "pretty" and "handsome" were not entirely different things, but points on a continuum. Or something. So it would be plain neurotic of me to fight the pleasure I got in acknowledging my own beauty---a sense of security or what have you---out of some goonish macho principal.
So I hadn't made the total mess of myself that I'd expected to. I was satisfied that I could actually go out like this if I had to. Which was fortunate, because a half hour later I did have to...
As noon approached I turned it to the channel that the game would be broadcast on. In one of the commercials that came on two adorable moptop college students---a boy and a girl---were flirting via text messaging, using computers that sat a few feet apart in some funky little cybercafé, shooting each other quizzical expressions and grinning smugly to themselves as they composed their messages. The girl didn't understand the boy's acronym YDABT at first, but it turned out to mean "You Deserve A Break Today", and she responded with unbounded enthusiasm and the message ILI ("I'm Lovin' It!") before they hurried off across the street to the McDonalds that had suddenly appeared there. "YDABT" and "ILI" were flashed on the screen, both apparently registered trademarks of the burger chain.
A vapid and unremarkable ad, except that it gave me a fantastic idea: Isn't there's an internet café down near the university? If there is I won't have to wait until tomorrow but can contact Ricky right now! A quick look through the yellow pages told me nothing conclusive. I decided to gamble on my memories, hoping that the place hadn't closed down with the spread of laptops and WiFi.
The laundry I had tumbling in the drier wasn't quite done yet but I went ahead and put on the panties and bra, the jeans and top I'd had on yesterday afternoon. As warm as it was today they would finish drying as I wore them.
I grabbed the big red purse I'd inherited from Joy, which had my wallet and a brush in it and not much else, jumped in my truck and jammed down to the neighborhood of used record stores, places that sold Tibetan prayer flags and Ché Guevara t-shirts, and smugly hip student taverns at the foot of the Princeton Palisades. Found the internet café and then a parking space further down the block, with 25 minutes still on the meter. Loaded it up with coins until I had the maximum four hours on there, just to make sure I wouldn't have to log out suddenly at a bad time.
I had thought I might get back home in time for the second half of the Mets game, but one little side trip led to another that day. As I focused on my errands, being out and about in this body was starting to feel a lot more normal than it had just 24 hours earlier. Although some aspects of this existence were going to take some getting used to...
As I approached the place, this 40-something academic fellow was stepping out through the door and held it open for me. As I slipped past him he ran his eyes up and down me, clearly liking what he saw. I felt myself smiling---he looked like Robert Redford at that age---and I was both flattered and attracted to him, if not officially interested. But to me this had seemed a fairly brazen thing for him to do. Guys didn't usually check out other guys as openly as this, right out on the sidewalk like this, unless it was at the entrance to a gay bar or a business in some entrenched homosexual neighborhood like Christopher Street...
But as he wandered off down the street and I stood letting my eyes adjust to the subdued light in coffee bar I realized that since I wasn't a guy now there had been nothing homosexual about what just transpired, and that he hadn't been particularly libertine for acting like he had. In purely mechanical terms he was a straight man checking out a female. And if this was true then my private flush of arousal (uncharacteristically, the fact that he was so much bigger than me had been a serious turn-on) was straight too; meriting us both the Heterosexist Seal of Approval from those who put themselves in authority to grant or deny this approval on the basis of what they deemed "normal".
It's hard to explain why this all felt so strange. Maybe it was that I had been this gay person for so much of my life---the object of either "homophobia" or "tolerance" from the hetero majority---that the notion of suddenly being just a normal person in the world of normals was disorienting. Without that sense of existing counter to something I felt oddly adrift. It was a so much larger world that I occupied here all of a sudden. If existence was a pie graph, then I had moved from the slender LGBT-slice out into that whole damn rest of the circle. I was like a bird that longs to get out of its cage but once it does feels overwhelmed by so much open space. 'Existential agoraphobia' or whatever...
And in some weird way I almost felt like a traitor to my faggot and dyke brothers and sisters. I'd escaped my people's marginalization and victimhood, just like if I'd been offered a 'straight pill' and greedily gobbled it down- "Nyuck! Nyuck! Smell ya later, losers!" It was a good thing this was temporary or I'd need to become a lesbian, just out of obligation...
Okay I'm kidding, but these reflections did make me wonder if I there was anything lesbian about me. But as I considered this bubbly little buxom blonde who was welcoming me to CAFበGIGO---and whose gorgeous smile alone should have made her desireable---it seemed the most I'd want to do with her would be to hang out with her, learn about her life and what she thought about stuff, and if we did hit it off hang out with her often; in short about the sort of relationships I'd always had with my women friends, plus whatever extra closeness our shared experience as females gave us (although since I'd been a girl for all of two days there wasn't much of this...).
So that was that, apparently. We don't get to choose who or what we like, and if I could choose it wouldn't be either a strictly gay or a straight orientation but the inclusiveness and egalitarianism of bisexuality. I had always felt this, and I envied Ricky for being bi, although he claimed it had made for a twice-as-confused adolescence...
I walked up to the counter, "Hi. I've never been here before. What do I do? Do I just go grab one of these machines, or should I buy a coffee first?"
"We'd prefer it if you did," replied the girl, whose name-tag read BARBARA. "And I need to give you your pin number. What can I get for you?"
"I see you have raspberry truffle syrup. Can I get a medium iced latte with a shot of that in it?"
Dragging a strand of hair behind her ear she grinned ruefully, "It's gonna be a day for iced drinks, I can tell. I'll be glad when fall gets here, if it ever does. The steam off these machines feels kind of good when it's cold out. I haven't seen you in here before. You go to Princeton?"
I told her my dad-keeled-over-and-is-in-the-hospital/sure-is-weird-being-back-here/my-brother's-a-dork story while she efficiently whipped up my drink.
"God, that's awful," Barbara sympathized, and showed me where my pin number was on my receipt. I stuffed a buck in the tip jar and went to find Station #18.
The computers were down inside these twenty-five individual tables, the screens at a 45 degree angle under glass tops that protected them against coffee spills, the keyboards on little pull-out shelves. Fewer than half of the machines were in use. Mine was in a cozy corner with no immediate neighbors, although this didn't matter much today. The noisiest thing in here was the Metallica blasting out faintly from around some longhaired guy's earphones across the room. I logged on to AOL and dumped all my accumulated spam (It wasn't likely that any miracle penis enlargment drug would help me at this point), then composed my e-mail to Ricky, trying to make it sound spontaneous when it was anything but...
Ricky Love-
Things are crazy here like you wouldn't believe. I didn't even get a chance to call until last night, and I'm sorry about...
I sat staring at the screen, sipping on my too-sweet beverage. What could I possibly say about Joey's bizarre performance?
...that appalling attempt at humor last night. I realized the second I hung up it wasn't funny. Just shows you what a weird weird space I was in. After a rough day at the hospital me + Joy were playing quarters over a bottle of Tuaca before I called. You know my issues with her, and drinking with her was an attempt to bond with her but it didn't work. As usual she was a total shit. Would you believe she smashed the phone at the end of all that? Even drunker than I was. So I'm stuck e-mailing until I can run out & buy us another one //// Also Papa has been just awful- like being sick gives him a right to treat people like dirt. For some reason he is right back where he was with me when I was a teenager, calling me FUDGEPACKER etc. etc. etc. & acting like being in the same room with his gay son might give him AIDS //// Makes me wish I hadn't even bothered coming. I have to keep reminding myself how seriously ill he is.
Lying my ass off here, and maybe it was unfair to Dad to make him sound like more of a homophobe than he was, after the progress he'd made-
Aw hell, who was I kidding? His "progress" had amounted to his condescending to shake my fudgepacker boyfriend's hand and grunt some nominal greeting to him so long as we all pretended that Ricky was my roommate. Compared to the mazel tovs, the loving insistance that I was family that I got from Ricky's parents it was pathetic. And after the vicious things he'd said to me as his stand-in daughter, he deserved a little baseless slander.
But who didn't deserve all this mangling of the truth was Ricky. I absolutely hated lying to him! But if I told him what was really going on he'd never believe it, and I had to explain Joey's insane stunt somehow. This was damage control- battening down the hatches and running the pumps at full blast just to keep my relationship afloat until I could get back into port. The truth could come out later, hopefully. In the meantime it would be lies and more lies...
And oh. To show how totally drunk I was + how out of control Joy is, after I passed out she decided it would be funny to shave my beard off. I was out like a light the whole time she was doing this. So when I do come home expect that I'll either be clean-shaven or just starting to grow it back.
So with all this shit going on maybe I was unconsciously taking my aggressions out on you with that strange joking around. I can't believe I was doing that. So goddamn sarcastic, acting more like Joy than anything I ever thought I would do. That's the only reason I can think of for me doing that and I know it's no excuse. All I can say is I'm humongously sorry + somehow I'm pretty sure it'll never happen again, all those same circumstances aligning in that same way. PLEASE E-MAIL ME A.S.A.P. I love you so much and any message from you will lift my spirits. Even if you're angry. I'm angry with me too after that!!
Grandma Rosa still about the same. Visiting with her is the one bright point in all this. She still seems healthy for her age + is still as wacky as ever. Less into the yoga thing and more into her witchcraft thing. She and her coven are performing a "healing spell" for Dad, this whole rigamarole with ancient languages and eye of newt, and in my less skeptical moments I can almost think there might be something to it. She ask about you + sends you her love.
Kiss Kiss-
Teddy
I almost took out the part about being a bit less skeptical of Grandma's beliefs. It was out of character for me, but it was a first step toward the incredible claims I hoped to be able to make someday. I pushed SEND.
Ricky must've been on the computer when I sent this e-mail, because his response came just minutes later. He wrote:
Teddy Bear!
I understand you might be very embarrassed. A secret like you told me must be hard. Coming out sometimes a multi-step process. As life goes on we find out new thngs about ourselves, or we admit them. Like the layers of an union. I ♥ you no matter what. So please don’t be afraid I will reject you or that you have to pretend you were joking. Was researching age related identity disorders last nite & it is nothing to be ashamed of. They say 3% of population have this. We are who we are. If u want to be DIAPER BABY sometimes that's OK. We can work something out. I ♥ you & want U 2 B happy!
Kiss kiss kiss, Ricky
As I read this, and re-read it, I thought: Jesus! After three years together how could he think I was into such a thing?
Well maybe because he'd heard me say it. I had known in advance that it was Joey he would be talking to, and had seen the fake Teddy grinning and smirking and rolling his eyes. But there's no way Ricky could have concluded that he was talking to my sister, who through an act of magic was inhabiting my body. Faced with hearing me acting so loopy and talking about stuff I never had before, Ricky had to process this, running this freaky behavior past everything he knew about me, and he must've figured I was carrying on like that---with that bitchy undertone of hostility---out of anxiety. That I had lived with this all my life and it had burst forth during a sort of nervous breakdown, the awful secret that I could no longer keep inside. This sort of thing is hardly unknown in LGBT circles...
And God bless him, he was trying to be understanding! To accept this about me because he loved me. I was deeply moved. From behind the counter Barbara the Barista noticed me grinning and sniffing back tears, and cocked her head. A subtle gesture, curious but not pushy about it.
"Boyfriend," I called out, just loud enough for her to hear. She locked eyes with me and smiled that beautiful smile of hers, happy to see a sister in love. Ain't romance grand?
Sure is, I beamed back, and fired off a response to Ricky, assuring him that I had no desires whatsoever along those lines. I explained how we'd watched this cop show episode with a theme of adult infantilism, and then that Jim Carrey flick about experimental comedian Andy Kaufman, which in combination with many many shots of Tuaca had inspired my ill-concieved flight of improvisation...
Ricky's next message was twenty-five minutes in coming. I bought a café americano to cleanse my palate after that last drink, hunted up an e-postcard to send to my friends at work, and read a few articles in Utne Reader Online before I saw that I had mail. For as long as it had taken it was brief.
OK if you say so. But are you sure? It sure sounded like you meant it! Your people do have that saying- IN VINO VERITAS...
More like IN VINO STUPIDUS, I responded. Really + truly just a weird lame attempt at humor. But if you honestly did think all that shit was real, then you were wonderful about it. Almost makes me wish I did have some wild kink for you to be so cool about. LOL. So much love and acceptance is wasted on my mundane vanilla sexual tastes. You know the sort of things I like. The only thing true in all that was when I said I wished you were here. Or considering how things are going with my father, I was back home with you...
We sent each other a half dozen more e-mails. I still wasn't sure if I'd completely convinced him that I wasn't some baby-man in denial. Denial was a big thing to Ricky. He was convinced that most of the world's conflicts and the blight of terrorism all stemmed from hung-up people who had gone kaboingo trying to suppress their true natures .......... But as we wandered on to other topics I was fairly certain that I wouldn't arrive at home to find a nursery full of oversized baby stuff assembled in my honor.
It sucked having to restructure everything I told him. It sucked not being able to just talk to him, and to hear his voice. But seeing his words on the screen here was better than nothing...
When I got home that night Joey was sprawled on the couch with the remote dangling down near the floor in his hand, this other hand flicking ashes into the ashtray on his stomach.
He held the cigarette up, grinning sleepily, "Sorry..."
"It's fine," I shrugged. I wasn't his mother, I couldn't stop him.
He saw my shopping bags, "What did you get?"
"Just some clothes."
"Can I see?"
I started to say no and to actually move the bags to behind my back, like this was something to be embarrassed about, then decided why the hell not. I nodded, and he got up and followed me through the arch to the dining room table, where I pulled everything out, holding up one item after another for him.
"Jesus," he marvelled, "You still dress like a Mormon. That skirt's kind of nice though."
"You can have it when we swap back. All the rest too."
"And you can have these," he said, tapping the pair of sunglasses that sat hiked up on his hairline, "I don't think they're gonna fit my head. I mean your head. Our head ..... You know what I mean."
They were these face-hugging things with purple lenses set at a weird angle, which if they'd been over his eyes would have made him look like some freaky mutant insect man. But as grotesque as the were, I knew from their little designer's logo they must have cost him most of the $100 Grandma had given him. I couldn't imagine myself wearing them, but smiled, "Hey thanks. So did you go visit Jenny Thurston?"
"No I never got around to it. I did see Dad though. He's doing a little better."
"Really?"
"I couldn't really tell but Grandma thinks he is. Something about how his aura looks."
"That's great!" I smiled, and started stuffing my purchases back into their bags, "I'm going tomorrow, that's what all this is for. But I just needed a day off."
"He really tore into you yesterday, didn't he? I'm sorry you had to go through that," he said, almost looking like he might start crying.
"Yeah. And I'm sorry he's so down on you. All that shit he said to me really pisses me off. To you, really. I get mad at you for crap like you pulled last night, not for something that's your own business. Having an abortion, it's ....... I'm not a woman and it's not my place to judge."
"Well you kind of are now. And you could get knocked up," he grimaced, like this alarming thought had just occurred to him.
"Don't worry, I won't get you pregnant. I'm not cheating on Ricky, and he's over eight hundred miles away. But I'm going to be e-mailing him a lot, I found this internet place down by the campus. And oh, while we're on the topic, don't you go making me a daddy!"
"Yuck! Don't worry, I'm still only into guys. I guess that makes me queer now," he chuckled, and chanted stridently, "We're here! We're queer! Now where's the fucking beer?!"
Moronic, but it had struck me as funny. "That's not how it goes," I giggled.
"Well I'm kind of new at this whole gay-lib thing. Grandma sure did a number on us, didn't she?"
"That she did. It's sort of interesting though, isn't it?"
"I don't know. Being tall's a trip, and I like not having guys hollar shit out of car windows at me, I don't feel so vulnerable or whatever out walking around at night. But there's other stuff ......... There was this little old lady coming up the sidewalk toward me today. She acted like she was scared of me and I couldn't figure it out. But then I saw my reflection in the window of a store and I knew why. I was frowning, thinking about something or other, and I looked this big mean guy!"
You are a mean guy, I thought, That bullshit you pulled last night! But I didn't bring this up. The frontal approach doesn't work with Joey. All that defensiveness when you try to talk to him, it comes from insecurity, a hidden sense of shame that goes right to the bone. What he really needed was therapy, but I had suggested this a few times over the years and he'd scoffed at the idea.
He pointed at the t.v. "Pulp Fiction is coming on at nine, if you want to watch."
"On broadcast t.v.? How the hell are they gonna do that? Cut out every third word? Naw, I'll pass. I've got this," I said, reaching into my purse and pulling the Ed McBain Precinct 57 paperback I'd bought. "But maybe we can watch one of Papa's movies tomorrow night."
"Okay, sure."
I gathered up my bags and went up the stairs. If by some miracle all our conversations over the next few days went as nice this I would think about starting to forgive him. The anger that had welled up in me at the mere sight of him this morning had been replaced by deep sadness for the way things were. Which didn't feel any better but it seemed an improvement somehow...
.
.
|||MONDAY OCTOBER 6~~~
Thinking that my visits with Dad might be helped to some extent by my wearing something feminine and totally un-Joylike, I had grabbed $500 out of an ATM and stopped at Hutchinson Brownmiller on the way home yesterday and bought a few items of clothing. Not that I spent all of it, but as long as I didn't have ID with my real name on it I would need to carry cash.
There were a lot of cheaper places I could've gone to, but I knew that I would probably need help, so I picked a store where the sales people worked on commission and would actually help you shop, instead of the big-box store approach of showing you to the approximate proper aisle then taking off running before you could complicate their day at work any further. This tactic paid off. I got everything I needed and got out of there fairly quickly and painlessly (Even with this female cerebrum and the estrogen in my veins I still considered clothes shopping a necessary evil...).
Calling up vague memories of things my mom had worn that my dad seemed to consider nice; I decided to go with a long skirt and a long sleeve blouse. I explained to Debbie and then to Camille that I wanted to look fairly demure without suffering for it in this weather, and they helped me in choosing light colors and heatwave-friendly fabrics. I was so clueless about what I needed that I think they gave me a little extra help because they assumed I was a bit retarded.
The blouse was a shiny pearl colored rayon thing with big squarish upholstered buttons (which Camille assured me were not funny looking), lightweight but not so light that it was at all transparent, since I recalled that time long ago when Papa got all bent out of shape over being able to see some "tramp's" brassiere through her top ........... The skirt was this wonderfully soft cotton material called crepe that really breathed, in a desert tan with a dull maroon pattern of tiny figures on it, like Neolithic cave drawings of random mundane objects- cars and tea cups, clouds, grinning cats and tennis rackets .......... When I stepped out of the dressing room Camille had produced a wide glossy black leather belt; which gave the skirt and blouse a pert separation, and removing the outfit even further from the realm of anything that Joy might wear. And I had to admit it did make my waist look nice and trim...
I didn't want to give up my comfortable sandals but I got talked out of them and into a pair of sleek black pumps---the first pair I tried on that didn't pinch---and then into buying hose in several different hues; which sent me out to the drugstore last night (right about when Messrs. Travolta and Jackson were driving around arguing with the headless guy in the back seat of their beater...) for shaving gel and Venus razors, after I discovered that the stubble on my legs had reached the rough-as-sandpaper stage. I shaved them after a long soak in the tub, and tried on the chocolate brown pair I'd decided on for this morning. And yes, the sensation of sliding the slippery stockings up my smooth legs was awfully nice, though a bit short of the mind blowing ecstacy that my neighbor Elsa describes in her transgender stories. Maybe because for me this wasn't a symbolic act, some expression of my me-ness, but like all the rest of this was done for the grim and very specific purpose of trying to get a dying man to stop hating me...
Then this morning I got a bit more adventurous with my sister's makeup, trying to make my face match the sophistication of my outfit. This time it was such a disaster that I didn't have the heart to try again. I looked like The Joker. But as I was scrubbing the mess off my face it occurred to me that I could pay someone to do this for me; someone who knew what the hell she was doing.
Recalling how helpful the girls at Hutchinson Brownmiller had been when they saw how ignorant I was about women's fashion, I found a beauty parlor on the way to the hospital (not Sirens, they would know my sister there...), parked around the corner and went in. I explained that I'd run away from an Amish community down in PA after coming into some money, and was excited about starting my new life as an Anglish woman. I had cooked my very own microwave burrito in my motel room last night, then watched that telemavision thing. Surely the Lord would not begrudge us such marvelous devices.
They actually bought this horseflop, and they loved me- thrilled at the prospects of introducing an escapee from that oppressively backward culture to the wonders of civilization! Talking slowly so I would understand, they told me everything I'd done wrong with my attempts to shape my eyebrows and dye and cut my hair (I had to grin, because the gangsta bitch eyebrows and bad dye job had been Joy's doing). They fixed my bangs for me, angling what I had left into a sharply postmodernist doo-dad like some 80's pop star might wear, gave my hair some subtle highlights and shortened it by about 25%, resulting in a style that could be worn down on my shoulders (As unfamiliar as this felt I was tempted to re-ponytail it about a million times that day...). And then as the girl did my face she explained the rudiments of cosmetics to me from the foundation up. This all took longer than I thought it would, but it was worth it. I looked five years younger, my rough cheeks now baby smooth and glowing rosily...
At so right around noon---freshly coifed and made up and dressed to the nines---I drove to Princeton Plainsboro Hospital and made my way through the labyrinth of lifts and corridors to my father's room. I stood there a second, took a deep breath, and went in.
I guess they're trying him out on solid food again. Or maybe he was laying in wait for me with his roommate's lunch, because as I stepped through the door he greeted me by hurling an entire plate of food at me!
It fell way short, landing closer to his bed than to me, and skidded face down across the linoleum trailing goo. The way he was glaring at me with his deeply sunken eyes was utterly demonic, and from how he was wheezing and had suddenly grabbed his bicep I was afraid he was having a heart attack. But then I realized he'd only strained his pitching arm.
"Oh Papa! Did you really have to-" I started to say, but he was having none of it. His face grew redder and redder as he repeated, trying to blot out the sound of my voice, my insufferable presence- "Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out!"
I got out.
These visits seemed to work better when there were more of us. If I tried to see him again I'd need Grandma to run interference for me. Downstairs in the hospital's lobby I called her up.
I wasn't even going to mention what had happened, and I was fine when I was talking to the woman (Birda?) who went to go fetch her, but as soon as I heard her voice I started crying, unable to speak.
"What's wrong baby? Come on, talk to me..."
"He threw his foooooooood at me!" I whined miserably.
"Who did? Joey?"
With effort I managed to control my voice enough to get out: "N-no, Papa. He went crazy on me! I'll call you back, okay?"
"Hold on, wait!" she commanded as I started to hang up, in a way that made me put the phone back to my ear, "Now tell me what's wrong."
"It's just. Just Dad. You know, the same old shit. I- I didn't know I was gonna cry, I swear! I'm sorry..."
"What do you have to be sorry about?" she asked gently.
"Because. Because of what you said. This spell thing you're doing. You don't need me calling you up all hysterical, putting chaos on you!"
"Listen Teddi, I never said that. I was talking about pointless chaos. Piddly little stuff. But this isn't piddly, okay? Your father needs me because he's so sick, but it's not like you're some lower order of priority to me. You went to see him and he- What did he throw at you?"
"I don't know. Some kind of macaroni junk. Corn bread. Jello. He just ........ He didn't even let me say hello," I sobbed, "He hates me, Grandma!"
"I'm glad you called then. Do you want me to come down there? My shift here doesn't start 'til six."
"Don't bother. Like I say, it's nothing new. And after I bought clothes, I shaved my legs, went to a beauty parlor- I did everything!" I wiped under my eye, saw mascara on my fingers, "Oh shit, I'm wrecking my face!"
"So you got all gussied up for him, huh?"
"Yeah," I laughed through my tears, "I always dress up nice and go to the salon when I know I'm gonna get Spagetti-O's thrown at me."
She laughed, sighed, said, "Maybe you shouldn't try to go see him alone anymore."
"I know, that's what I was thinking. Why I called. Could you go in there with me tommorrow?"
"Absolutely. This morning I was down there around ten-thirty. Is that a good time for you?"
"Sure," I sniffed.
"I'll see you then, then. And afterward we can go to lunch someplace if you want."
"That's- that sounds great! So at ten-thirty I'll be down here in the lobby at ten-thirty, watching the- What is it with this place?"
"What do you mean?"
On the big screen t.v. it was 1924 again. Harold Lloyd wearing heavy pancake makeup and hanging from the hand of a giant clock a hundred feet above the ground. A tall, scruffy man with a scuzzy-looking beard was braying his head off at the silent comedian's mortal predicament, banging his cane on the chair in front of him to the general annoyance of everyone around him...
"Nevermind, it's not important," I said. We I-loved-youd and hung up.
So here I was, all dressed up with no place to go. What did I do now?
I went to the mall and saw a movie. Bridget Jones 3: Bridget Goes Hawaiian. I laughed louder than anyone else in the place. Then as I was leaving I impulsively bought a ticket and went back inside to watch another one. Clint Eastwood's Grand Turino, which was a good film but not such a good idea, since it reminded me of how Papa and I used to watch him in all those old Sergio Leon spaghetti westerns. The nameless character Eastwood played never said much, and as we watched neither did we. Unencumbered by the awkwardness of conversation, those had been some of our best times together...
I swung by CAFበGIGO again on my way home, in hopes of chatting with Ricky, but while he had emailed me that afternoon he wasn't online. I sent him an edited-for-gender account of the food chucking incident and the rest of my day. Spent a few hours fooling around browsing the net as I kept checking my mailbox for Ricky's response before finally giving up and leaving.
Driving home it occurred to me that I'd drunk more coffee than I intended to--- way too much caffeine for so late in the day---and by the time I got home I needed to pee in the worst way!
Joey was in the bathroom, the water in the sink running. I hopped around doing a pigeon-toed little dance (What the hell's he doing in there? And WHY hadn't Dad ever got around to building that downstairs bathroom?!), and after ten painful minutes I rapped on the door.
"Don't be banging on the goddamn door!" he shouted angrily, "I'll be done when I'm done!"
Finally---just about the time I was convinced I would have to go squat out in the backyard---the door opened.
He stood blocking the door. Shaking his head. "You poor bastards."
"Could you get out of the way? Who's a poor bastard?"
"All of you," he said as I pushed past him, "Guys..."
I slapped the door shut, hiked my skirt up, my panties down. Sat and let fly a urethra-stinging torrent of pee. "Why's that?"
He laughed disdainfully, "You call that an orgasm?"
.
.
||| TUESDAY OCT 7th, 2:00 A.M. ~~~
It's two in the morning and the most amazing thing has happened! It's so different this way. Like nothing I'd ever experienced, any fantasy I'd ever entertained...
Now I know why I hadn't found Ricky online last night. He was coming here!
Still not convinced that I was okay after our weird telephone conversation Saturday, and sensing that there was something going on here he was not being told about, he had hopped on a plane for Newark, took a cab from there. Rang the doorbell just over an hour ago.
The fake Ted had gone out on some mysterious midnight errand---to Ricky's disappointment and my relief---so my boyfriend had to make do with being entertained by the weird kid sister, who he found he was getting along with surprisingly well.
"You don't seem at all like I remember you, Joy. Or like what Teddy was telling me."
"Well actually there's a very good reason for that."
I put all my chips on #7 and spun the wheel. Told him the truth. And so far things have gone a hell of a lot better than anything that Grandma's pessimistic warnings had suggested would happen...
Ricky looks me up and down. He has been interrogating me for nearly an hour, more and more amazed at how completely the real Teodoro had prepared me for this stunt of ours, that he was gamely playing along with...
"And our dog's name?"
"Anyone who's met us knows that. We get so carried away telling people about him sometimes. It's Mike."
"Mike what?"
"Okay, when we started out you were totally stuck on the idea of some classic cliché name like Rex or Fido. I thought that was just an awful idea! Still do as a matter of fact-"
My masturbation fantasies have always started out heavy on dialogue, as realistic as I could conjure up, building to the good stuff slowly- and this one is no different in that department. Fast forward as I recount the whole drawn out dog-naming process for him, name by rejected name, detail by uninteresting detail, surprising both of us with how much of it I remember...
"-until finally we just went to the white pages directory and picked a name at random. And that's how our spoiled baby got to be Dr. Michael Langhorn, D.D.S....
He laughs, stops. And finally I start to see acceptance the truth dawning behind his eyes. Amazement. He takes my hands in his, looks into my eyes, searching them. I nod, nervous and hopeful, not saying anything. Please Darling, please! Throw away everything you know about what's possible and just believe!
"Our dog," he says in a slow, dazed drone. "That day at the ice cream parlor. The birthmark on my perineum. And what our landlord Jim confessed to us."
"I know," I laugh, "Him and that Army buddy didn't really even do anything, but that was such a big huge deal to him. Probably would've taken it to his grave with him if he hadn't been so drunk..."
Ricky slides his fingers down my cheek and murmurs, "I don't know how could this happen. But with everything you've said, and something---I don't know, just the way you act---I mean MY GOD! It really is you in there."
The tenderness in his voice. Oh how I've missed him! And then I'm in his arms, this all feeling so familiar except for how my face is bent upward as we kiss. [This passage gets more and more graphic, and if you want you can skip ahead to the break (~~||~~~||~~) without missing much but my description of my fantasy and what I'm doing here; doing with one little dancing finger what used to take my whole fist and a lot of wrist movement to accomplish. I had scraped myself painfully with my nail one time before learning to be careful...] And his beard is so much rougher against on my smooth skin, but this feels wonderful somehow.
A furnace door opens deep inside me, sending a delicious heat up my belly, into the soft undersides of my boobs. As if by telepathy he touches me right there, gently hefting my breast was his large hand. "Such pretty tits!"
Never having been a tit man, I had no real way of judging. "Really? I thought maybe they were kind of small."
He traces over the edge of my ariola with his thumb. Shakes his head, "Not at all. Maybe they're not like the girls you see in porno, but for your build they're just right. And your face! If you had to be---what was that you called it, transcarnated?---you could've done a lot worse. I met Joy that time, and I might've had some passing thought that she could be kind of nice looking if she didn't act so hard. But I never saw just how-"
"Let's not talk about her."
He nods in agreement. Leans in and starts flicking his tongue across my nipple. I spasm and inhale sharply!
"You always dug it when I did this," he purrs, "I'll bet it feels even nicer now. You like that?"
"Don't do this to me," I moan.
"Do what?"
"I'm so fucking horny!"
"That's a problem?" he laughs gently.
"Yes! No! I mean …... I just don't want to start anything we can't finish."
"What are you talking about? You know I'm bi under the right circumstances. And I'd say the circumstances are about perfect. We'd be nuts not to do it this way while we can ........... Oh, we're gonna finish this!" he asserts. "I mean unless there's some reason..."
"No! No reason," I say, grabbing onto his shoulders and mashing my whole body up against him, and then we're kissing again.
His lips grazing mine, he asks, "So then you want to?"
"Ung-gawd, yes!" I gasp. I'm a churning mass of need. I want him in me NOW!
His face pulls back and he asks casually, "So d'you wanna be top or bottom?"
Smiling smugly. He knows how crazy horny I am and he's toying with me.
"You bastard, just fuck me!"
His fingers slide into me, wiggle the soft flesh back and forth, "You mean here?"
I try to answer but it comes out an animal noise. I nod frenziedly.
"Oh my God you're wet in there!" he declares, and as he pushes me back onto the bed he threatens lovingly, "I'm gonna fuck you like I've never fucked you before!"
There's no need for a condom. Being imaginary, this is the ultimate in safe sex. I am just one big squirm as he climbs atop me, slides into me and starts pumping. My back arches, I raise my pelvis to meet each thrust and he fucks me harder and harder, his hand (well my left hand, actually...) greedily kneading my breast!
And then---both in my fantasy with Ricky and here in bed alone---I come, a thunderous waveshock of ecstacy rushing outward from the epicenter of my clit, every spot it touches melting and then solidifying in its wake- leaving me intact but totally limp, overwhelmed by the intensity of it.
'MORE!' screams my body. And the tip of that finger is still at work, fingertip whorls catching nerve endings on my little raisin until my Bodily Seismic Warning System cries out as another one builds and erupts-
It was phenomenal. Female orgasms were everything Elsa wrote about in her stories of transformation by various means (even though she herself had real way of knowing this, except for maybe some instinctive knowledge of what it should be like...). If you're a guy and you've never been body-swapped you can still do the math, three orgasms in a few minute's time are better than one in however many hours. And as the literature claims, each of them really does feel more---shall we say comprehensive---than my little pop gun going off had.
And while it's sort of a shame that I'll be returned to my old form without ever getting to make love to Ricky like this for real, I am still eager to be go back. Bigger and more frequent orgasms are nice, but they're not enough to make me want to be a woman for the rest of my days. As a gay male I'd taken pleasure in both fucking and being fucked, the sweetness of surrendering to penetration and the power rush of being some raging Bwana Dick cocksman. So while this is better in many ways I've lost out in terms of variety ......... I want my little pop gun back!
But more importantly, life is about a lot more than sex for me, and on some hard-to-define but quite fundamental level a female just
isn't
who
I
am...
.
.
To be continued . . .
.
[Note: Bwana Dick is a song by Frank Zappa, an anthem of penile self-aggrandizement. I didn't know what else to call it. That part of Teodoro's personality is a bit of a stretch for me...]
I'm getting pretty good at this, I thought as I applied mascara from the new tube I had bought with a deft, unflinching hand. The lip liner I'd put on before my lipstick made my lips appear a critical millimeter or so plumper at the places where they seemed to need it ....... In a way this wasn't unlike those portraits I had painted for my whole family for Christmas a few years back. Each had its own unique set of criteria, which it would reveal to you as you worked on it; and sometimes you needed to fudge the truth a bit. Like softening the features (just enough, it still had to look like her...) on that one I did for my Aunt Livia, who was a dead ringer for Anthony Quinn...
There was no telling what Papa would think of my efforts this morning. As unforgiveable as Joy's crimes were to him, it was likely that no matter what I wore or did or said he'd continue to see me as having snake's eyes, horns and a tail. This mission of mine to fix his relationship with my sister by pretending to be her had a real Don Quixote feel to it. Everything I'd seen so far told me it was doomed to fail. But nonetheless I'd polished up my armor + was sallying forth once again...
.
. ||| TUES. OCT 7~~~
After all the difficulty I'd had getting to sleep last night (and what I did to finally bring myself to a state of contented exhaustion) I woke up late on Tuesday. Late enough that I would have to take a few shortcuts as I prepared to go out. A shower instead of the leisurely bath I'd promised myself. And instead of trying to arrange my hair like the stylist had it yesterday I just tied it back.
The single chime of the old pendulum clock downstairs told me it was 9:45 already. If I had been headed anywhere else I might have skipped the morning makeup ritual as well---it was something I'd gotten along without for 33 years after all---but since the man I was planning to visit wasn't speaking to me, trying to look grown up and normal and pretty for him was about the only kind of statement I could make.
So with some apprehension I opened the makeup box and got to work, knowing that if I messed this up I would really be screwed for time! But luckily those tips the beautician had showed me yesterday all came back to me, everything going on about like it should. It seemed weird to be developing all these skills that I would have no use for after the 31st. But I knew I would be left with a new appreciation of the simplicity and expediency of preparing for my day the guy way...
I wore my expensive new blouse again, tucking it into Joy's burgundy jeans, which together with the pony tail made for a sporty yet neat-and-crisp look, or so I thought.
There was no way of knowing what Papa would think. As absolute as Joy's crimes were in his mind it was likely that no matter what I wore or said or did he would continue to see me as having slit-pupiled eyes, horns and a red scaly tail with a barb on the end. This mission of mine to fix his relationship with his daughter by assuming her role had more of a "Don Quixote" feel to it every day- everything I'd seen so far telling me it was doomed to fail. But errant knight that I was, I once again found myself charging at them sonofabitching windmills...
Making my way up Albert Einstein Blvd. I was hitting every stoplight at exactly the wrong time, and I was nagged by the feeling that there was something I'd forgotten to do this morning. It would be an hour later when I figured out what this was, and when I did I'd be relieved to find that it hadn't been anything too boneheaded, but only that I'd completely spaced on breakfast.
Grandma Rosa was sitting in the ground floor lobby when I showed up at the hospital at 10:30. And she had The Russian with her, who she'd waylaid on his way to the cafeteria.
When I'd last seen him in '02 Grisha's sable hair had been liberally peppered with gray. Now it was gray with smatterings of black. He got up from the molded plastic chair, fixing me with his dark and melancholy eyes. There was nothing reproachful in his gaze, only sadness for this screwed-up girl who had caused her family so much heartache. I also perceived something else in it, something that it took me a bit to decipher...
A sense of kinship. That here was a fellow soul unable to play by society's rules; who knew the dark allure of the short con and also its consequences- of never being completely trusted by those who knew you. He stooped down to wrap his arms around me, a head like a buffalo's resting heavily on my shoulder.
"Joy," he moaned, "Joy! Joy! Joy! Joy! Joy!"
"It's great to see you, Uncle Grisha," I sighed, relaxing in his powerful embrace. If Grisha had seemed big when I hugged him as Teddy, now it was like being in the arms of some loveable storybook giant. And all at once I knew something else about this man...
In the back of my mind I'd always sort of wondered if Grisha was harboring lecherous feelings toward my sister. Or not always; these suspicions first surfaced around the time of my twenty-first birthday, so I'm not speaking of the unspeakable here. But this was about when I started noticing the way he'd cover her hand with his when they sat together, and that he seemed to want a LOT of hugs---spontaneously, in mid-conversation---grabbing her and not letting go.
And while Grisha wasn't anywhere near as graphic about this as Il Vesuvio's walking penis of a cook Spanish Eddie, he did tend to go on at length about how he loved the ladies. Tall ones, short ones, fat, skinny and of all ages and ethnicities. And then there was his bizarre fixation with television's Judge Judy (which may have been some weird judge-as-dominatrix thing he had going...). So with Joy being prettier than most of the women that he pointed out as being desireable, I figured he was at least "copping a feel" whenever he could, if not secretly pestering her to make it with him...
But now that I was Joy as far as he knew, I could tell---could sense in his touch somehow---that there was nothing at all prurient about his affection for her. In his heart he was simply her loving uncle. And now I was ashamed of these suspicions of mine, unconscious as they had mostly been. Disturbed by their resemblance to the dirty-minded accusations that my father would to conjure up out of thin air, his paranoid take on people's motives.
And if those Russian bear hugs Grisha had given me as Teddy were somewhat briefer and less frequent, I knew it wasn't homophobia exactly (To my astonishment he'd defended me when I came out as a teen, likening my being gay to a case of albinism. Maybe not "normal" or what they had hoped for but nobody's fault really, and nowhere near as bad as certain other mutations I could've been stricken with...) but more likely that he had wanted to avoid stirring up any lustful impulses in his sexual albino of a nephew...
"I love you," I whispered, squeezing him back even harder, and then by some unspoken agreement we both let go.
Grandma had been smiling at our reunion with dreamy tenderness, but now became businesslike, "So. Are we ready to go do this?"
Meaning was I ready for this. I nodded, and we headed for the elevators.
Papa was sitting in bed staring at the t.v., which was off. He was as much of a wreck as the last time I saw him, and for a long while I wondered if he wasn't paralyzed from his neck down and neglecting to mentioning this fact to us. Arms lying limply at his sides, not moving and inch from his slightly lopsided position but making Grisha and Grandma lean in to kiss him. And although he grimaced like I smelled bad as he recieved my own quick peck on the cheek, he didn't pull away.
They talked. How the restaurant was doing, this continuing heat wave, the Mets' latest victory, and about some two-year-old quarter horse that a racing columnist my father and Grisha both swore by expected to perform phenomonally next season.
Thinking he was being helpful, Grisha grabbed the tethered remote on Papa's bed and turned the t.v. on, turning it up so we could hear. It was the final half hour of one of those a.m. news/weather/celebrity-recipe programs; a human interest piece about a pet that had showed up at his former home after being missing nearly a year and making some impossibly long journey. Just the sight of this wholesome family fussing and cooing over this dog like a happy little feather duster sent a tear sliding down my cheek, then another in its wake. Oh great! The last thing I needed during a visit with my dad was to get my tear ducts stirred up.
Grandma cocked her head at me, grinning, You always did have a soft spot for animals, Teddi...
Uncle Grisha noticed my moist eyes too and seemed puzzled. If my sister had seen this segment she likely would have made some crack about America's excessive devotion to its pets "when there are so many starving humans in the world"; and if it had been one of the family's humans that had gotten lost like this she would've found some other reason why it sucked, because Joy hated morning shows like this. Their middle-of-the-road upbeat blandness offended her. She didn't get that this blandness was their main appeal, that people didn't care if it was "phony"; they wanted something comfortable and unchallenging at this hour, not strobe lights and screaming heart attack music. Grisha might not have known Joy's every little like and dislike but he did have a good general sense of her. There was something very different about her today, but what?
In all this time my dad hadn't said a word to me. I knew he wouldn't, and I preferred this to how he had reacted the last time I tried to visit him. But I could tell my uncle was getting ready to say something about it, and my amateur attempts at telepathy ("No Grisha- DON'T!") had no effect on him. He asked pleasantly, "Aren't you going to say hello to Joy?"
"No. I'm not."
"But Joe..."
My father's nebulous smile hardened into a sneer. And now he did move, jerking his arm in my direction, "You can say hello to her, you like her so much. Hell, do whatever you want with her. You got twenty bucks? She'd probably let you fuck her in the ass for that much."
"Joseph Bodhidharma Farranino!" cried Grandma, genuinely outraged, "That was uncalled for!"
He held her gaze. "Was it?"
"You know goddamn well it was!"
He seemed pleased that he'd upset her. "If you don't want me talking like that, don't bring the girl here. But if you do, then I'm gonna say what I think. Which is that nothing she did would surprise me. And really I don't care. What she does, or whatever happens to her..."
"Yet she is here for you," Grisha gently reproached him.
"Bullshit. She's here for her. She wants back in the will."
I hadn't heard about Joy having been cut out of his will, but it sure made sense that he'd do this. For me to protest too forcefully would just sound like some ploy to him, so I simply said, "I don't care about the will."
He answered me by telling his other visitors, "She lies. That's what she does. And I don't care how much you two gang up on me, I told you what the deal was! And yet here she is again. You know it's funny, I was under the impression you were coming here to see me. But so far this whole visit has been about her. That's something else she's good at."
"This visit is about you, Caro. But you're a part of this family, and so is she."
"So you keep saying. You act like I'm the one who did wrong here. Seems like you can forgive anything but someone saying: 'No! This is wrong! I WON'T go along with this!' To you that's 'intolerant'. God forbid anyone should ever take a stand on something!"
Grandma cleared her throat, displaying the nasty jagged scar on her forearm where the police down in Birmingham Alabama had set their dogs on her and her fellow freedom riders. The smaller one from the handcuffs that had deliberately been put on tight enough to tear into the ball of her wrist at the Chicago Democratic Party Convention later in that tumultuous decade.
"Okay so maybe you can. But so can I. And this is me taking a stand."
On the television they were wrapping up the story of Snookie the Schnauzer: "So please folks, get an identification chip for your pet. They're usually less than $25, and to show you it really doesn't hurt them, GOOD MORNING USA's own Tim Ziffhart has volunteered..."
"But Joe," crooned my uncle, "she's your daughter!"
"Goddamn it Grisha, this doesn't concern you! This is between me and my family."
"Then maybe I should go," muttered the Russian, wounded at being so curtly reminded that he wasn't really part of our family.
"Maybe you should. Maybe you both should split, since you're both on her side."
"Nobody's taking sides here, Jojo."
"No? You bring her in here, after I told you I never want to see her! I said this way before I got sick. I said it that day you dragged her in here, and then on Monday after she came strutting in here all dressed up like she thought she was somethin' so special," wheezed Papa, sounding like he was on the verge of one of his horrible coughing fits- "But who the hell cares what I want? Huh? And don't you give me that look, Grish! I haven't heard one single word of support from you about this. It's all been poor, poor Joy! Well if this is how it is I don't need none of youse comin' round here..."
Grandma Rosa frowned, "So it's either her or you, is that what you're saying?"
"That sums it up pretty good."
"Fine then," she said, snatching up her big macramé tote and shooting to her feet.
"No Grandma! I'll go. Papa needs you here. You don't have to do this because of me."
"Yes I do! People who issue ultimata like this need to be called on them. They should have to live with the consequences," she stated, her expression cold and intractable even as her right eye (the one that my father couldn't see) winked playfully at me. "Just remember Josepho. It was you who who wanted it this way. If you don't want me here I have better things I can be doing with my time. I'll be praying for your recovery. Come along Joy."
"Me too," I said as we headed for the door, "I mean, uh ...... Get Well!"
"Damn my nose itches!" announced Papa, and I wondered if this was some allusion to Pinocchio's lying. But no, his nose was itching. He clawed at it and the bruised flesh around it.
Uncle Grisha did a confused little vacillating two-step then moved closer to his pal. Before we were out of earshot the two men were talking in there, cautiously reconnecting as friends...
As we made our way through the maze of corridors I said to Grandma, "You winked."
"Yep."
"So then you're coming back here?"
"Of course I am. You were right when you said he needed me. We all need visitors when we're in a place like this," she said with a circular sweep of her hand, "But I want Josepho to realize this too. I'll only be staying away and not calling him the rest of today and tomorrow, but lying in bed like that it'll seem like a week to him. He deserves worse than that after that crack about Joy being a twenty dollar whore, but if he died while I was off proving a point I'd never forgive myself. One day though, I'll risk that."
"So I should stay away tomorrow too?"
"It would help. I just hope my hunch about him is right."
"Hunch?"
"That his attitude toward her is starting to change."
"You're kidding!" I gasped, "You mean for the better?"
"I think so. Your father's got quite a mouth on him, and a real mean streak, but when it comes to hate he's more of a sprinter than a marathon runner. He paints himself into a corner with all that talk, but after a while if no one lays down any fresh paint---confronting him, bringing it up---he'll start to feel he can modify his position without losing face."
"Like he did with me," I said, brightening as I remembered how futile that situation had seemed, until one day he started talking to me again. (He'd been watching STAR TREK as I edged past his chair in the living room to get to the stairs---the one with the blobby monster attacking workers in that mine, until Spock mind-melded with the creature and found out that she'd only been protecting her babies, the eggs that the miners had been collecting as gemstones---when out of the blue he said, "Hey sit down, this is a good one!"). And it had only taken a year...
"So hang in there kid," smiled Grandma, patting my shoulder reassuringly, "You hangin' in there?"
"It wasn't too bad today. Maybe because you and Grisha were there. Or maybe I just know about what to expect now. You can only shock someone so many times with the same routine."
"Righto!" she chirped, all Julie Andrews brightness. "Say I know it's a bit early for lunch, but you hungry?"
"Now that you mention it I'm famished! I guess I'd forgot all about breakfast today..."
The Gyropolis was an old favorite of ours, a dumpy little takeout joint with chipped formica tables and randomly mismatched chairs that was clean where it counted and had incredible Greek food. We split a #12 souvlakia-and-Greek-salad platter and a side of stuffed grape leaves.
We found a table that was out of the fierce sunlight pouring in through the big front windows, and right in the path of the box fan on the floor. We expected to be called up to get our food, but Mr. Stavros himself came out with it, bringing it right to our table. I was surprised that he'd even remembered us. He'd heard about Papa and offered his sympathies, wanting to know how he was doing and if he'd be out soon.
When we admitted how little was known he assured us that Josepho was in God's hands and would be fine---the sort of things you pretty much have to say, ignoring all the times when God decided He had other plans for someone in Papa's position---and on his way back to the kitchen he tore up our check and told the girl at the counter to keep our iced teas refilled.
Souvlakia is barbecued pork, so not every little gyros stand has it on their menu. When the flames kiss the marinated meat, magic is born. Grandma speared a chunk of it with her fork, inspected it, and popped it into her mouth, sighing, "Poor little fellah..."
"I know, we're murderers," I pouted, and as I followed suit I bleated pitifully, as if I was speaking for the pig, "W-w-why are you e-e-e-e-e-eating me-e-e-e-e?!"
The quasi-masochistic humor of lapsed vegetarians. Hers had been an eighteen year stint and mine about that many weeks. Maybe Grandma had had an actual reason for giving it up but I hadn't. Just your basic teenage sloth and lack of commitment, all my teenage Buddhist karuna for our animal cousins proving to be just so much lip service.
Grandma grabbed another piece, then a slice of cucumber and a tomato wedge, building a little shish kebab on her fork. "Oh well, it's their own damn fault for tasting so good. But still, 'He who durst to harm the fly shall risk the spider's enmity...'"
"Just remember when you've scarfed me down, that's only half of the merry-go-round!" I shot back.
"What is that? It sounds familiar."
"You're not the only one who can quote William Blake," I said loftily, and snagged the next-best-looking piece.
She frowned, her brow all hunched up, "No really. What's that from?"
"You mean it's not Blake? I thought it was from-"
"Cut the crap, Missy!"
"It was? I thought Cut the Crap Missy was by John Donne- Okay, okay! Put the fork down!" I said hurriedly as she hefted it like a weapon. "It's from one of those old 'underground comics' you gave me when I turned sixteen. The one where the guy's in a diner about to eat a hamburger, and the burger and the mustard and ketchup bottle all get up and sing him that song. But he eats it anyway, and a second later it's like the whole world is attacking him! Gas mains blowing up, falling pianos, out of control missiles from the test range-"
"I remember that one. And then after all that he picks himself up and goes, 'I know what I need ...... ANOTHER HAMMMMMBURGER!'; like he hadn't learned anything!" she laughed. "I hope you took good care of those. Most of them were signed."
"Um..."
"You didn't!" she groaned.
"It wasn't me, Mom threw them out," I said around a mouthful of lettuce. We'd already polished off the souvlaki and the grape leaves and were now descending on what remained of the salad. "Or I'm pretty sure it was her. They just disappeared one day."
Coming into my room to put my socks away or something, stopping to leaf through one of her "Little Man's" wacky comic books, which she must've assumed would be about on par with MAD magazine, and instead seeing page after page of drug abuse, kinky sex, splatterpunk violence, and humor that she would not even recognize as humor...
"I guess she would've found some of that in there rather shocking," Grandma tittered, "Elizabeth was a sweetheart, and confrontation wasn't her style, but I can see how she might have considered me a bad influence on you kids. Too bad she did that though, you could've made a nice chunk of money putting those on e-bay!"
"Mmmmm," I agreed, spitting out the pit from the last succulent olive.
The counter girl---about my age and with skin even worse than mine, her hair piled and sprayed into a New Jersey Marie Antoinette---came by to top off our drinks and then gathered up our plates, amazed to not see a speck of lettuce, a crumb of feta or a smear of tzatziki sauce left on them. As if we had licked them clean, although we'd managed to stop short of doing this. "Didja say ya wanted a hamburger?"
"No we're good. That was, uh ........ a joke," I explained.
She smiled uncomfortably as she left us, like she thought we were weird but was trying to not show it since we were friends of the boss. Were we really that weird? Maybe we had been kind of loud. Carried away like Grandma and I sometimes got, shouting about hamburgers and William Blake...
Grandma Rosa shook her head. No Teddi, we weren't doing anything wrong. It's her. Some folks just have an abysmally low weirdness threshhold.
We seemed to be having more and more "conversations" like this. Maybe this was that business my neighbor Elsa had told me about; how women tended to be more attuned to subtle cues regarding the moods of others than men were (an observation she had made after living as a man for fourty years and then since February as a woman)- something I hadn't really been privy to until recently. But maybe there was something else to it...
I finished off my iced tea. Said, "Do you really think Papa's feelings about Joy are changing?"
Grandma thought about this a bit and said, "On the surface it's still all the same old bluster, but he's done what he needed to according to his beliefs, making his disapproval known. How much it hurt him. But he knows he can't bring the baby back, and he misses what he and Joy had, even if it wasn't the warmest, most sentimental kind of relationship. So I'm pretty sure that wall of his is crumbling, although he himself doesn't even know it yet."
He himself doesn't even know it yet. Was this just astute observation? She did have a degree in psychology. But then again she was a witch and could yank people's minds clean out of their bodies.
After all my skepticism about the paranormal I still found it a bit embarrassing to be saying something so preposterous, but I had to know. "Grandma, can you ......... Are you telepathic?"
"Sometimes. Your grandpa I had a remarkable psychic connection. We got busted one night playing charades with Bill Buckley and his wife Pat---back before he got famous---one of us shouting the answer before the other even did anything. And it seems like I'm starting to develop one with you," she grinned, shaking her head 'yes' as if to things I hadn't asked aloud, which suddenly made me feel all witchy and special and good. "And there are times when I even luck out with total strangers. But then there's times when I'm just BS-ing myself, not reading anything but my own little imagined voices. Which is why I call this a hunch."
"Whatever it is, I hope you're right. I hate being the cause of you guys fighting like that."
She frowned, "You're not the cause of anything! It's not you who your father's mad at, it's Joy. Joey..."
"Yeah, but Joey's not the one who keeps going there the day after day, when we know that Dad'll just get bent out of shape. When he's made it so clear he doesn't want me there! The fact that I'm not who he thinks I am, in a way it makes it worse. Like I'm showing up there in a devil costume, just to torment him. I wish just once I could visit him as myself, without all this drama!"
"Well If you wanted to you could tell him about the body swap."
"I can?! I thought we weren't supposed to talk about magic around him."
"He had just been admitted when I said that. I was playing it safe. His condition does seem to be getting worse, but gradually, and I don't think the shock of learning something like this would do him in. After living with me for the past year he knows a lot more than he lets on. One day back in June he was about to to go water his dichondra and it started raining. He muttered something to me about not needing 'that kind of help'. Like he thought I did it!"
"Well it is sort of confusing. I'm not real clear on what you can and can't do myself. I almost think you like it that way. It keeps you mysterious..."
She offered me her 'mysterious' smile and said, "So go ahead and tell him. He'll be mad at me for practicing witchcraft but he'll stop treating you like something he stepped in."
"I'll think about it. It's a big change in how we're playing this!"
"It's up to you," she shrugged, and started to slide her chair back, "You ready to go? Or did you want more tea?"
"Oh no! I'm just about tea'd out," I said, chewing on the straw in my plastic tumbler. (While this whole 'Abracadabra, you're a girl now!' situation was starting to seem more and more normal, there were still odd moments of disorientation. Like wondering how the hell my straw had gotten lipstick on it, and then a heartbeat later remembering it was my lipstick...)
Grandma Rosa scribbled FOR 2. ANYTHING + DRINKS. -ROSA on an Il Vesuvio business card and as we left stopped by the counter and hollared back into the kitchen, "Hey Nicky! I got something for you."
He came to the little window behind the counter and the cashier passed it to him. She was clearly relieved to see us go.
"Somebody sure has a stick up her butt!" opined my grandma we climbed into Papa's Lincoln Continental. She found the controls for the AC and put it on full blast, and pulled us out into the narrow streets of Geek Town (the R in the sign having been painted out for the umpteenth time), heading for the hospital where my truck was...
.
"You know, if you did decide to tell your father about your 'secret identity' you should do it when I was there, so I could back up your story. Because if it was just you, well he wouldn't believe Joy if she said the ocean was wet."
"Do you think we should?"
"Like I said, that's up to you. But I know he'd be glad to talk to his son, since Joey doesn't seem to be visiting him. Although seeing you like this might take him a bit of getting-used-to. Or hell, he might think it as an improvement. This is one way of turning you straight!" she chuckled, "Assuming you still like boys."
"I do," I told her, "The other night I ........ I thought about Ricky."
"I would imagine you think about him often. So what you mean is you masturbated."
I nodded, looking downward, suddenly childlike in my embarrassment.
"And how was it?"
"Pretty fucking great!" came out of my mouth while my brain was searching for a more seemly way of saying this.
"Yeah?"
"Um, yeah," I said, my head still bobbing, like that flocked plastic boxer dog sitting in the Lincoln's back window. While hardly a prude I really didn't want to get into all the juicy, drippy details of that experience with my dear old white-haired granny.
"Well that's good," she said simply. Inviting me to change the subject.
"Anyway, I'll keep telling Papa about the body swap in mind, as an option for later. But to do it right now, it would feel like I was giving up on this too soon. On trying to be 'good Joy' for him, to show him I can take whatever he dishes out."
"Spoken like a true martyr," she teased, "Like mother like daughter..."
"Oh fuck you!" I giggled, "And how would that explain Joy?"
"That should be obvious."
"My God," I groaned, "they do seem to have a lot in common, don't they?! No, I'm doing this because it's the last thing Joy would do. He's got to notice that eventually, the way his daughter's changed. I mean even if he thinks she's conning him, to get written back into the will, she'd never put up with all that! It's like she can't think that far ahead. We've seen her walk away from money before, if it meant a little work or-" Suddenly something she'd said a while back clicked. "Oh shit!"
"What? Did you leave something back at the restaurant?"
"No. Nothing like that ......... What did you mean when you said Joey isn't visiting Papa?"
"Well he's not. Not since that first visit with us on Saturday."
"You sure about that?"
"I sure haven't seen him. Unless he's been sneaking in there after hours. Why, did he say he was?"
"Sure did! And he was real specific about it. This whole story about you and him visiting, and you saying Papa was doing better because of how his aura looked-"
"That never happened."
"Goddamn it!" I exploded, "Didn't he think we would get together and figure this out? He lies so damn much, and yet he's not even a very good liar!"
"Don't sell your brother short. I'm sure he could be an excellent liar if he put his mind to it..."
This latest bit of jocularity fell flat with me, and I rode the rest of the way back to my car in a grim silence, not hearing much of what she was saying. 'Orgone theory' or some silly thing...
.
Oh damn it, damn it, damn it! If Joey was lying about this then what else was he lying about?
.
.
To be continued . . .
.
Old Mrs. Pirelli was yelling at me from her backyard, "Joy! Come down from there! Yer gonna break ya neck!"
"Only if I fall. How you doing Mrs. P.?"
"What?!" she hollared, squinting into the harsh sun, "What're ya doin' up on the roof?"
"Cleaning out the rain gutters."
"That's a man's job! Let yer bruthah do that!" she cried.
This was the woman whose Nativity scene had been blown up by my sister and her idiot headbanger friends. She hadn't spoken to Joy since. Now not only was she speaking to me, she seemed inordinantly concerned for my safety. She warbled hysterically, "No Joy, leave that for Teddy to do! You've gonna get hurt!"
"Hey, I can do any job he can! Haven't you heard?" Maybe the sun had gotten to my brain, or maybe I was just irritated at this old busy-body telling me what a girl could and couldn't do, but suddenly I was performing a jerky go-go dance and singing loudly, "The sisterrrrs are doin' it for themselves! Standin' on our own two feet, and ringin' our own bells!"
"For God's sake, STOP THAT!" she shrieked, alarmed at my dancing so close to the roof's edge. That crazy Joy Farranino was being crazy again...
.
||| WEDNESDAY OCT 8 ~~~
A day off from visiting Papa. It would have been a good day to go sit in some air conditioned movie theater again, but I decided to tackle a couple of things that I'd noticed needed doing around the house.
Joey was eating a bowl of Shredded Wheat when I came downstairs in my kimono at 7:30. I sat down at the table across from him and poured myself a bowl, dousing it with milk and dusting it with sweetener. "You going out again?"
"Yeah, this place called The Paintball Jungle that Mike Greznowski's been telling me about. Don't worry I won't get your clothes messed up; they give you these jumpsuits, goggles and shit. Our reservation is for nine-thirty, so I'll probably be able to go see Dad again when we get back."
"Cool," I said, managing to keep the skepticism out of my voice. "I'm cleaning the upstairs carpets today. Could you leave your room unlocked so I can do your room?"
"It is pretty yucky, so that'd be great. There's this one spot, I don't know what somebody spilled on there but it's like crunchy ........ And then tomorrow I'll do something around here. The windows maybe."
"Just do your own dishes," I said, nodding toward the crowded sink.
"I'll definitely start with that!" he promised. Come on Joey, surprise me. Mean it for once!
Out in front of the house a car honked its horn. Honked again. He stood up, looked at his bowl and then toward then toward the source of the noise. Started shovelling cereal into his face.
"Just take it with you."
"Oh right," he said, grabbing the bowl and heading toward the front room with it. "Ciao!"
"Ciao. And your room, it's open?"
"Shit," he swore, then spun around and went gallumping up the stairs.
I went out to retrieve today's newspaper off the driveway, in truth being a bit nosy about who my Joey's little friends were.
An old monkey-shit brown van had angled itself into the driveway behind my truck, blocking the sidewalk, indistinct figures laughing and hooting in there, the Red Hot Chili Peppers thundering out through where the side door had been rolled back. I wrapped my kimono more securely around myself and bent down to pick up the paper.
Someone manoeuvred himself into the gap in the van's side, "Hey Joy! Lookin' gooooooood!"
"Oh, hey Mike," I waved, mentally adding, 'Lookin' fat and unwashed and in need of a haircut!'
Then I chided myself for such cattiness. Greznowski was okay. There was no meanness in him, he generally just wanted people to like him, and he'd always treated me decently as Teddy, taking my homosexuality in stride. In fact it was "Teddy" who he was taking to play paintball with this morning. And who was sprinting past me now, leaping into the open hatch as they peeled out and zigzagged off down the block, the Chili Peppers exhorting the whole neighborhood to "Give-it-away-give-it-away-give-it-away now! Give-it-away-give-it-away-"
But still I had to wonder. It was a quarter after eight on a Wednesday morning. Didn't any of these guys have jobs?! Was 31 was the new 13? And if it was how did I get in on such a life of carefree indolence?
Or hell, what did I know? They probably busted ass all night loading up truck trailers down on Industry Parkway, and made more in a year than I did. I went back inside.
At nine I went to the supermarket and rented a rug shampooer, then did the whole upstairs carpet. I decided to begin with Grandma's room, the farthest from the stairs, starting at the back of the room and working my way out. Her closet was the upstairs' terminal point; I wheeled the shampooer to it, opened the door and started cleaning in there...
I imagine I was a surreal sight, dressed as I was and wrestling with that big chrome machine, like some character out of a David Lynch film. Since it was only me in the house and it was getting hot already, I wore just Joy's sandles, a brassier and her Catholic-schoolgirl skirt- which I could filthy up with impunity, since I hadn't even considered incorporating into my October wardrobe. It was odd that I detested the thing so much, it was a normal enough plaid skirt. Perhaps it was its "costume" aspect. A damned silly thing for a grown woman to wear.
'But I'd wear it for Ricky if he wanted me to...' popped into my head. [AND HERE AGAIN THE NEXT 7 OR 8 PARAGRAPHS CONTAIN SOME RATHER SEXUALLY GRAPHIC THOUGHTS OF MINE. FEEL FREE TO SKIP THEM IF THIS SORT OF THING OFFENDS YOU...]
I had been imagining sex with Ricky a lot since I first tried playing with my clitoris early Monday morning. It seemed that I was always the passive partner in these scenarios, or not lying there passively but definitely the fuckee in our fucking, and always being fucked that aperture that I had only recently aquired. Even when I was on hands and knees with him looming over me, taking me from the rear, doggy style (like we had done enough times...) his cock wasn't in my bottom but angled into my pussy; which in these past few days had become the eager center of my sexuality. I could imagine enjoying being penetrated anally or sucking him off, but these seemed more like side dishes than the main course.
And when I thought about fucking him---or anyone for that matter---it seemed oddly unreal. I remembered the sensations associated with that organ well enough, the throbbing heat that permeated it as it grew rigid, the areas of greater or lesser sensitivity up and down its length, but none of this seemed relevant to me. To this me. I had a vagina there now, and she was a horny little thing, craving cock or a suitably shaped substitute, and I imagined she would be amenable to an obliging tongue. Very amenable...
Should I be concerned by all this "fuck my pussy" stuff? Am I becoming some kind of after-the-fact transsexual? Is it time to FREAK THE HELL OUT?!!
No, I was simply getting comfortable with this body. With what it wanted. It wasn't like I hadn't ever wanted to be fucked before this. The fact that where I wanted it had shifted was a simple matter of "because I can". And likewise the sudden absence of any phallic imperative was ........ Well because for the time being I couldn't.
Surely the same acclimation process will happen in reverse after Joey and I swap back, I reasoned with myself. I will greet my less voluptuous physique like an old friend, and resume my practice of being both fuckee and fuck-er, depending on my mood, since I'll be equipped for this. My cock is a horny little bugger and will reassert his wants soon enough. I will grow my beard back, and it will feel right having a furry face, not odd like it has been starting to seem. I will leave the toilet seat up, like God intended (especially if it gets Joey back for that rather rude surprise when I sat down to pee this morning!), and I will NOT go through life with a sense of loss for this body, this pussy and these wonderfully soft and sensitive breasts; or all these other, non-sexual aspects of being a girl that I'm starting to see the appeal of...
Until then things were what they were, and whatever thoughts and feelings came to me I would own. This was my "trip to Japan", and I wouldn't spend it hiding in the American Quarter eating at Denny's. I would enjoy the pleasures this body could bring me without worrying, and these horny daydreams that I seemed to drift into at the weirdest times...
Like Ricky coming into this room, dressed anachronistically in a wide lapelled pinstripe suit for some reason, his hair slicked down á la Gomez Addams, home from his trip to Brussels or someplace, a long flight on that Lockeed Constellation, dropping the heavy suitcase plastered with old fashioned destination stickers and then without a word yanking my skirt down to where it drops---sliding down to my ankles---pushing me back into this closet, pulling his own pants down only to his thighs and screwing me standing up, we both in the grips of our consuming need after his long absence (Why did he have to travel so darn much?), my back pressed against all these coats and things, this pocket that I am squashed back into, a variety of textures embracing my ass and shoulders---soft cotton, fluffy fur and the cool density of leather---his silk hula girl tie sliding against my breasts and his cock shoved clean into the middle of my pelvis, where it belongs---I an enthusiastic sheath to this glorious fleshy dagger---and these coathangers jangling crazily overhead as he fucks me, fucks me- OH MY GOD YES, DON'T FUCKING STOP!
I could feel a delicious slipperiness between my legs, and I considered shutting off this noisy machine, going in, lying back on my bed, and-
But no. I would finish these chores, and later (In the bathtub? With that AquaMassage thing on a hose that was draped over the shampoo rack?) I would reward myself with this new variation on an old hobby. Replaying "Ricky Fantasy #7" from the beginning and bringing it and myself to a proper climax.
I changed the water in the machine, dumping the bucket of dirty water down the toilet and filling it with fresh from the tap in the tub. Finished Grandma Rosa's room and started on Joey's.
And what if when this was all over the "worst" had happened, and I was hopelessly and forever female in my identity, either within this body or my old one? Would that really be the end of the world? If I officially supported transgendered people and thought they were okay, then wouldn't I be okay if I found out I was one? Well of course. I'd just have to rethink myself somewhat. Who I really I am.
I supposed what was giving me the heebie-jeebies was the not knowing. If what I was going through was common to all body swaps or something exceptional and bizarre. I would bring these concerns up with Grandma tomorrow after the hospital, asking her how she had related to her borrowed flesh during her year-long stint as a male, and how she had felt when she was returned to her own....
The mystery crunchy spot on Joey's carpet presented no problem, cleaning right up like it had never been there. Except for the serious array of locks he had put on his door and the two windows (that hammering I'd heard back in PART 6, if you'd been wondering...), his room seemed normal enough, and---except for this bowl of soggy cereal that he'd lost track of in his haste to leave---was surprisingly tidy. No giant hookahs or charred spoons lying around. And I was quite proud of myself ("Some people have integrity!") when I managed to not go snooping through his stuff.
I shampooed the rest of the upstairs and then the carpet on the stairway, which was as awkward as I had feared, basically holding the big machine half in mid-air. By the time I was done my lower back was aching dully, but the results were worth it. The ugly dull green carpet was now an ugly bright green...
Not wanting to go up on the roof dressed like this, I changed into my jeans and pulled on my blue-green tank top. I dragged the extension ladder out out from its hiding spot and leaned it up against the house. Screwed the pistol attachment onto the hose, cranked the water on all the way and clambered up onto the roof with it.
It had to be at least a hundred. The sun was beating down fiercely on the roof's dark shingles, and on me. I should've worn a hat. But wow, what a view from up here! The art deco cube of the old Con Ed power station four miles away, topped by a long dormant ring of smokestack...
"Joy! JOY!"
Old Mrs. Pirelli was yelling at me from the backyard next door, where she'd been watering her rose bushes, "Joy! Come down from there! Yer gonna break ya neck!"
"Only if I fall off. How you doing Mrs. P.?"
"What?!" she hollared, squinting into the harsh sunlight, "What're ya doin' up on the roof?!"
I fired the spray gun experimentally, twisting the nozzle to get the narrowest, most powerful stream. "Cleaning out the rain gutters."
"What?!" A decade ago she had underwent a pair of operation that restored 90% of her hearing. But by then she'd been deaf for so long that screaming 'What?' every so often seemed to have become a habit. She shook her head sternly, "Oh fer God's sake! That's a man's job! Let yer bruthah do that!"
This was the woman whose front yard nativity scene had been blown up by my sister and her idiot high school friends. Joy had claimed it had only been a couple of cherry bombs, but from the wreckage it had looked like they'd used bricks of plastique. The Baby Jesus had disappeared entirely. Possibly he was in orbit.
It was a grudge that Mrs. P. had nurtured for years, literally turning up her nose whenever she saw Joy (those single digit salutes my sister would give her in response hadn't helped matters, or the time she mooned her from the window of Gordy Johnson's Camaro...), and she wasn't real friendly with the rest of us Farraninos either after that. But now not only was she speaking to me, but she seemed inordinantly concerned for my safety.
"He's busy today. Helping some friends paint an apartment," I fibbed as I started blasting the sediment of leaves and decomposing gunk out of the gutter. "This won't take me long."
"What?! Leave that fer Teodoro to do! Yer gonna get hurt!" she warbled in a tone close to hysteria.
Why would I get hurt doing this and 'Teddy' wouldn't? It made absolutely no sense, and it was kind of insulting. "Hey, I can do any job he can do! I mean hey, haven't you heard?"
Maybe the sun had gotten to my brain, but I started doing a jerky go-go dance and singing, "The sisterrrrrrs are doin' it for themselves! Standin' on our own two feet, and ringin' our o-own bells!"
I was keeping my feet firmly planted on the roof, but my dancing a mere twenty inches from its edge made her shriek,"Fer God's sake! Whatta ya doin'?! STOP THAT!!"
"You know," I told her, sticking my tits out proudly, "The Women's Revolution."
Or maybe it was that after all my intense diplomacy with Papa, Joy's relationship with this woman wasn't a major concern of mine. And it wasn't as if I was being insulting, just kind of loopy. She was fun to goof on...
"Oh, those women! They're all a bunch of-" she used an Italian word I didn't know, which might or might not have been a disparaging term for lesbians, "You don't wanna be like them!"
"Sure I do. People forget what the feminists have done for us. They weren't just a bunch of bra-burning kooks. They were great Americans, doing the most American thing you can do! Where would you and I be without women like Alice Paul, going on that hunger strike until women got the vote, ready to die for our rights, so we'd be regarded as a capable, thinking adults, the equal if any man!"
Or maybe she just pissed me off with her idiotic views on sex roles, telling me what a girl could or couldn't do. I'd had issues with this kind of reactionary sexist crap as Teddy, and now it had become personal. I might be a renter in this body, but I wouldn't want to be a second class citizen for even a month. So while I was joshing around with her I also meant it.
"And what good did it do us? A buncha bums and crooks is who we get to vote for! And this time's the worst!"
"I would've thought you liked John McCain. He sure seems like an improvement on-"
"WHAT?!! With that crazy broad from Canada he's got runnin' with him? The way she talks, it makes my teeth hurt!"
"Alaska you mean, right? She's the governor of Alaska."
"I don't care if she's from the moon!" she yelled, "Bums are bums! I wouldn't waste the car fare to go vote fer bums like them! So Joy, how's yer fathah doin'?"
I filled her in as best I could, and she too assured me that Papa was in God's loving hands and would pull through.
Whatever detritus I hadn't blasted out of the gutter I chased down to where it joined the drain pipe. I squatted down, pulled out and what I could reach, then squirted water down the infarcted pipe until only clear water flowed out of the bottom end. Stood up, "You see? I'm half done and I haven't fallen yet."
"Well ya wouldn't get me up there! I'm scared t' death ah heights!"
"It isn't my favorite place to be either, but someone has to do it. Papa's going to be weak for a while when he gets home, and you wouldn't want me sending Grandma up here, would you?"
"Well God bless ya for helpin' out! It's nice to see you're starting to grow up! But I still don't see why ya couldn'ta waited fer Teddy to do that!"
"Which is what he told me, that he'd get to it tomorrow. But I had the time and figured what the heck. Well I've got to go do the front of the house. I love your roses by the way, they're beautiful!"
She beamed from ear to ear at this. Those rose bushes were her pride and joy. My little offhand compliment had made her day.
The front gutters went easier, there was hardly anything in them. Then I walked down to the Raji's liquor store three blocks away.
Up on the at the front counter was a carousel rack of watches, none with any packaging or instructions, like they might've come from the lost-and-found at the bus station. Most were crap, but there was this beautiful little women's watch mixed with in them, and I needed a watch. Arjuna started at twenty but we settled on $14 (another cheap Christmas present for Joy). I bought one of those oversized cans of FOSTERS, a bag of potato chips and a little saran wrapped square of halvah, my reward for being done with all the projects that I'd assigned myself to do around the place...
Or almost done, I reminded myself as I made my way home with my bag of goodies. There was still that frighteningly ancient fuse box in the service porch that I wanted to replace with a modern breaker panel. But that would go in quick once I actually bought it. And after that...
I was still thinking about Atlantic City. I'd give Grandma's hunch about Papa four or five more visits, and if he hadn't lightened up on me by then I'd take off for a while.
I didn't have that serious of a gambling bug, three nights should be plenty to get this out of my system. The room would be air-conditioned, I could watch HBO, and what I was really looking forward to was finding some place that had a nice pool I could park myself beside, a fruity rum or tequila drink in my hand. I would need to buy a bathing suit. A bikini I supposed, because that's what most of the women there would be wearing. When in Rome, or at least at Caesar's Palace...
And what would sitting down for a poker game be like as a woman? Would I be a better bluffer? Worse? Would I be subtly or overtly condescended to, given the game's overtly macho mystique, the way guys never seemed to feel so much like guys as when they were at a poker table? But there were women poker players, so I should be okay if I presented myself as a serious contestant and not some ditz who might start crying if she got a bad hand.
And how would I even dress for this trip? Some female equivalent of my usual souvenir tourist-wear, or should I go fancier? And if fancier, what kind of fancy? I could imagine about four different directions dressing up could go in, each signifying something different about the wearer...
As I had gleaned from that fashion tutorial I'd been given by the girls at Hutchinson Brownmiller, women never just throw on clothes on the basis of their passing the sniff test; everything they wore was in some way a statement. Men did this too to an extent (gay men perhaps more than straight), but with the exception of your dandies these were mostly statements of the social or economic group you were claiming allegiance to: Anarchist hipster or sober-minded Christian, the union hall or the corridors of power. But unless you were headed for a job interview or out on a date this seemed like far more of an optional thing for men. Suddenly the simple matter of going on vacation had all these weird unknowns...
When I got home there were three roses---pink, yellow, red---in an olive oil bottle on the porch. Three sided and tapered like an obelisk, the heavy bottle made a pretty nice vase, its simple lines probably more to my taste than any of the real vases that Mrs. P. would've deemed too valuable to give away.
I brought it into the kitchen, a centerpiece for the table that we ate at most often. Put my beer in the fridge. The Mets game started in an hour, at 4:00 our time. I had missed a couple of their games but the important thing was that they were still hanging in there, with a clear shot at the series.
Up the stairs to the bathroom, stripping as the tub filled, then I eased myself into the tepid water. Aahhhhhhh, I love the water! I couldn't wait to get to that hotel and jump into the pool, although swimming might be a little different, the way I seemed to be bobbing here...
On an impulse I had retrieved Mrs. Pirelli's gift from the kitchen table and brought it upstairs, setting it on the bathroom counter where I could look at these three perfect roses while I bathed.
.
.
For me Ricky? Thank you, they're beautiful! Oh I am not, you big flatterer! There's lots of girls more ....... What? Well of course you can, I'm sure there's room in this big tub for both of us...
.
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To be continued . . .
FOR AN ALTERNATE VERSION OF WHAT HAPPENED TO TEDDY ON WEDNESDAY GO TO:
http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog/14672/wrong-turn-play-nice
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My gravely ill father had put his foot down (Part 7), telling my grandma that if she and Uncle Grisha insisted on bringing his degenerate daughter along then he didn't need them visiting him either. Grandma had called his bluff, letting him sit out Wednesday (Part 8) without a single visitor, and I spent that whole day happily playing with- I mean by myself at home. Doing a couple of cleaning projects I'd been meaning to get to, then watching the Mets game (9-2, we slaughtered 'em!), and then an old Meg Ryan romantic comedy with a pretty heartwarming ending. A peaceful, productive day ....... But all good things must come to an end, and come Thursday it was time to venture back into that hospital room again.
Where to my utter astonishment Papa was pleasant to me from the moment I arrived. Talking to me and everything! Wow, Grandma's little boycott must've really done the trick! But all was not as it seemed...
THOUGH THE EVENTS OF MY STORY HAVE BEEN TOLD IN SEQUENCE SO FAR, THIS CHAPTER AND THE NEXT ARE A BIT DIFFERENT. THIS CHAPTER DESCRIBES THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF MY DAY, AND PART 10 MY REUNION WITH AN OLD FRIEND JUST AFTER NOON…
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||| THURSDAY OCT 9 ~~~
Grandma wasn't waiting for me this today when I got to the hospital at 11:00, and I thought she had probably already gone to see Papa. I went up to the sixth floor and risked peeking into his room. He was alone, staring off into space with catatonic stillness and didn't see me. I went back down to our appointed meeting place and sat for twenty minutes, half-watching as Boris Karloff chased Abbott and Costello around a haunted house. Then in what had to be madness itself, I decided to go back upstairs and risk visiting my dad without backup.
As I came through the door he smiled at me. It was vague and kind of crooked, but it was clearly a smile...
"Hi," I said. Was Papa really going to be nice to me, or did he have another surprise in store for me? (A gun?! No that was a bit paranoid.).
"Hello," he answered, and already I could see signs that he was in somewhat better shape than he'd been on Tuesday. He was having an easier time sitting up, his skin was a healthier shade of gray, and his voice didn't sound quite so raspy and faint. He was still a long way from being well though. His IV drip---whatever was in there---was this florescent greenish yellow gunk that looked just like Gatorade.
This was unreal. I hadn't expected such a reception from him, and I wasn't sure what to say. He grinned at me shyly, I grinned back.
"I'm glad you're here," he said, "I need ........... I don't know what I need right now. Maybe just company. Is that okay?"
"Of course. That's why I came," I smiled, letting him know I bore no lasting hard feelings about how he'd been treating me.
Papa startled when I grabbed his hand in both of mine, but then squeezed back. He said, "You look nice."
I let go, straightened my blouse. "Thank you. I've been trying to dress nicer than I was back on Saturday."
"Were you here Saturday? I don't remember."
Surely he couldn't have forgotten such an intense encounter, like the big third act trainwreck in some Tennessee Williams play. Or maybe he meant that he remembered but was unclear about what day it had been, which I could see happening in this place. Though if he really didn't recall all that ("I'm ashamed I ever brought you into this world!") it was probably for the best.
I shrugged, "It's okay. Really."
A weird noise came from his throat, like a dead person trying to laugh. He said dully, "Things are so ......... I don't know. I can't believe how much I'm sleeping. And oh man I had the worst nightmare last night! Or maybe this morning. Do you know anything about dreams?"
"Like what they mean? Not really, but I'd love to hear it."
"Okay, but this was weird. Weird! It was about these ......... these things," he moved his hands around as if literally groping for the right words, "These furry idiot things."
"Idiot things?"
"They were sort of like people but- No they were like bears. Or monkeys. But fat, fat and furry. They had these things coming out of their heads," he said, putting a fist on the crown of his head and sticking his index finger up to illustrate, "There was a blue one, a pink one, a green one, a red one and I think a purple one..."
This sounded very familiar somehow. "And where were you in this dream?"
"I wasn't in it, thank God. It was horrible! They lived in this bunker or something, underneath like a field. Maybe a park. These grassy little hills. It was like the inside of a submarine under there, but it wasn't. All machines and stuff."
"What did the machines do?"
"They didn't do anything. Or maybe they sang. I- None of this made sense! And yeah I know dreams don't make sense, but this was-" he blew his nose on a mint green kleenex from the box in front of him, recoiling in pain. He inspected the results with a look of horror, wadded it up and dropped it onto the cantilever table with some others, like a row of little cabbages.
"Was this in the day or at night?"
"It was day. It's always daytime there. The feild had rabbits, they ate the grass. Maybe the things ate the rabbits. But there was this mood to it; or not even a mood, it- It all felt empty. Like maybe these things were all that was left of the human race, a million years after the bomb or whatever. These weird idiot things, clapping their hands and walking in circles and going 'Blee-blee bloo-bloo blah-blah' like it meant something! It was awful!"
I looked at the t.v. up on the wall. On PBS Clifford the giant red dog was giving all the neighborhood kids a ride. Oh, okay...
"That wasn't a dream, that was on the television. A show that comes on real early on this same channel."
"But nothing they did made any sense!" he barked. "When they talked, all it was was 'La la lee lee!' and 'Gooby-gaggy-goo'! That wasn't on no television."
"It's true, Papa. It's a children's show called the Teletubbies. It's been on for years."
"Why the hell would they show something like that to kids? They wouldn't!!" he shouted, suddenly agitated, panicked by the notion that something so monstrous could be broadcast to millions. (And maybe there is something demonic about the Teletubbies. Somebody had given a stuffed toy of the pink one to Ricky and me as a joke present, and our dog Mike decided that he wanted it. But when he got it in his mouth and it started talking gibberish he dropped it and fled into the other room so fast- Oh God we were in stitches! And our ferocious big baby has been terrified of the thing ever since...)
"Here, I'll show you, it's in the t.v. listing," I said, looking around for the copy of the Times that usually formed a messy pile somewhere in this room, but now I didn't see one...
"Why are you lying to me? Is this some kind of game? Some sick game?"
"Of course not-"
"It is! You're trying to mess with people when you know they already don't remember things so good! Some sick, pyscho psychology shit," he hollared, "You write it down, or you got a- A camera behind that mirror there, or-or-or-"
He was furious, and was having a real hard time breathing. I had to get him calmed down!
"All right, maybe you're right. It kind of sounded like a kid's show I saw once, but it doesn't matter. Whether it was a dream or whatever, it's over! It doesn't matter what it was, okay Papa? So just please-"
"Papa?! What kind of hospital are you people running here, telling me all this shit?! I don't want you, I want that other nurse! That colored girl, the one who's in charge. I want- GET HER IN HERE NOW GODDAMN IT!" he roared, and with a violent sweep of his arm knocked the tissue box, his reading glasses and the bowl of pudding he'd eaten one spoonful from off of his table and onto the floor!
It was a "Tyler Durden moment". Like that horrifying scene in THE FIGHT CLUB when that character suddenly realizes that major elements of his life had been hallucinated, and all his perceptions and assumptions about what was going were nonsense. No wonder he wasn't angry with me, he doesn't even know who I am!
"Daddy, I'm not a nurse. It's me! It's Joy," I pleaded.
"What? You're not Joy. Joy's my daughter."
"But I AM your daughter. Look at me!" I insisted, grabbing hold of his wrist.
He jerked it out of my grip, "Let go of me you screwy bitch! That's bullshit! Just bullshit! MY DAUGHTER IS SEVEN YEARS OLD!"
I gaped at him. What do you say to something like this? He was probably certain he'd just bought that car of his, that gas was ninety cents a gallon and Ronald Reagan was in the White House...
Once again with my father I'd fallen down the rabbit hole into some place I had never imagined and didn't know how to cope with. I'd never had to deal with an Alzheimer's patient, anyone like that, and was at a total loss here. I put my hands up and started backing away from him, "Okay Papa- uh, I mean, I'll just-"
"You tellin' me you're my daughter, and I'm on television with them things after the bomb?! NO! That's just CRAZY! Get that Janice in here, you headfucker bitch! Her I can maybe get some truth out of-"
His vital signs must have gone through the roof because now here she was, the nurse that had yelled at me when I'd almost plowed her into on Saturday. She ordered me from the room with a jerk of her head.
"Here she is," howled my father, "She'll tell you! She'll tell you! She'll tell you! She'll tell you!"
"I guess I'll try again tomorrow," I muttered as I squeezed past her.
She smiled consolingly, "That's all you can do, Honey."
I fled down the hall with my father's voice echoing behind me, screaming about the furry idiot things and the "Blee Blee! Bloo Bloo!"
I wound up crying my eyes out in a park a mile or so from the hospital, where I ran into Jennifer Thurston, an old friend of Joy’s and mine from high school It was a bittersweet encounter. Not that I have any problem with Jennifer, and she was delighted to run into her friend Joy again. But seeing her with her tiny three-month old baby made me inexplicably sad. [I'll tell you the whole story of my meeting with Jen-Jen in PART 10 ~ MOTHERSHIP DOWN. It deserves its own chapter.]
Our day together flew by, and I went home to find…
Okay. I had promised that I wouldn't keep bitching about Joey's smoking in this memoir. And I came to agree with my editor Elsa when she said that I was coming off as strident (or whiny was how she'd put it...) and deleted several long passages about this at her behest. But this here was just goddamn ridiculous!!
When I walked into the house Joey was in the living room, crouched in front of the video cabinet, deep in conversation with himself and smoking like a chimney. The room was clouded up like one of those scenes from the old Cheech & Chong movies, where the boys are indulging heavily in their favorite pasttime- only this wasn't marijuana smoke. I almost wished it had been, it would have smelled better...
I opened the window. It was 95 degrees out, why was the damn thing even closed?
"Gawd, Joey! What are you doing?"
"I'm organizing Dad's movies. He's got them crammed in here any old way, war movies next to comedies next to science fiction- no fucking order to 'em at all. I'm sorting them into genres and alphabetizing each one. I kind of wanted to do something with directors but I don't really know directors like you do, and Spielberg here does both comedies and heavy shit, so I-"
"No! I mean this!" I said, waving my arm through the cloud of smoke, visibly disturbing it, "Are you trying to give me cancer?!"
"Oh sorry. I guess I have been kind of smoking a lot."
"You guess?"
There was a brimming ashtray on the floor next to him. I picked it up and hauled into the kitchen. He got up and followed me, telling me excitedly about an idea he had for a movie: "about this kid who everybody picks on at school until he discovers he has like these superpowers..."
And another ashtray sat overflowing onto the kitchen table. Even discounting the half dozen butts with KOOL printed on them in green letters, that were clearly someone else's (Joy had loathed the menthols I used to smoke, to the extent that I seldom had to worry about her pilfering mine), he must have gone through two packs worth here today. I had NEVER seen my sibling smoke this much; except maybe at our mother's funeral where she'd been chaining nonstop, tossing the butts into the open grave, giving Mom snipes to smoke in the afterlife...
I carried them to the steel trash can, stepped on the pedal to raise the lid and dumped them both in.
He sighed resignedly, "Okay, I guess I should start going out on the porch."
"THANK you!"
"But look, I mopped the kitchen floor. And the service porch too! And so anyway, the kid, his name is Jimmy Messenger-"
The mop bucket was parked in the middle of the room, the string mop stewing in the gray sudsy water with its handle sticking out parallel to the spotless floor...
"Wow you did! And you did a great job. Thanks for pitching in," I grinned appreciatively as I sat down at the formica table, but I had a bad feeling about what I was seeing here. And hearing.
"-and Jimmy finds out he can move shit with his mind, too, because it turns out he's an alien from the planet Bob---Be funny if there was a planet named Bob, wouldn't it? But of course when they say it wouldn't mean Bob; you know, like the name Bob; Bob could mean 'mighty fortress' in their language, or 'ultimate wisdom', or anything really---which his parents weren't gonna to tell him about 'til he was 16, they wanted him to fit in with the Earth kids and be normal and everything; but he couldn't anyway, and only this one kinda weird girl likes him. I see her as like this Winona Rider type-"
The ravenous smoking, his sudden interest in cleaning, and this sucky movie that he was continuing to rattle off his synopsis of, despite my not showing the slightest interest---("And so then the GOVERNMENT finds out and they send these assassins, and him and his girlfriend have to build this machine-")---since it seemed to be enough that I was there. It all added up to one thing-
Not waiting for a gap in the hemmorhage of words, I said sweetly, "And thanks for sorting out those movies. They were really were a mess."
"-'cause she's an alien too, but from the Omega Quadrant, and her species is at war with his, so both of their parents really don't dig that their kids are- Oh yeah! I should go finish that," he said, and hurried off, leaving me sitting in this acute silence, once again able to think...
Why would there be an Omega Quadrant if there's only four of them?
If I asked him if he was on meth he would just lie about it. And if I persisted and he eventually copped to being tweeked he would minimize it, it was just the one time, he'd quit tomorrow, it wasn't a problem---come on Teddi, you're such a tight-ass!---all that shuck and jive.
He had never been disposed to listen to people at the best of times, and now he was on this garbage, which gave you illusion of being in complete control, so fleet of thought that you must really be a genius after all, that diminished your teachability while it inflated your ego to grotesque proportions; and by tomorrow he'd probably be convinced he was from Planet Bob and could move shit with his mind...
So pleading or arguing would be a complete waste of time. The only thing that could affect him in the slightest would be pain, loss, some privation that would have an actual physical effect on him in a way that words never would. Like say, a trip to jail.
Which was very tempting, and not exactly out of vindictiveness. Reformatories might not reform anyone, and penitentiaries seldom make inmates penitent, but Joy had always cleaned up really well in the joint, looking lots healthier when she got out.
But Joey might not be released by the end of October, and then I would be affected. My position with my company was secure enough that I knew I could get another month or two off while I hung around Princeton in this body, what with my dad being sick and my poor old granny needing me here. But it would seem damned peculiar if I did this all by e-mail, never actually speaking to them.
And short of knocking him out and chaining him to his bedframe with an ankle shackle (another very tempting solution) I didn't have the power to ground him, to forbid him to hang out with so-and-so or to go to wherever. And I wasn't even going to consider involving Grandma in this. She had her hands full right now...
So what then? How to threaten the self-interest of this selfish, self-centered bastard who thought only of himself? What could hurt or alarm him enough to make him want to change his behavior? I pushed the heavy mop bucket out onto the back porch, dumped it out onto the flagstone patio. Squashed the mop's head in the ringer a few times and stood it up to dry in the sun, went inside and opened the fridge. Hungry. And seeing all the food I had stocked it with I had my brainstorm!
If I was alarmed about what he was doing to my body, I would return the favor...
Joy had never much cared what she did to her innards---swiss cheesing her brain with ecstasy, the speed that kept her in a size 2 even as it had started to put lines on her face---but she was fanatical about her weight and waist size. She was quite proud of her slimness, and when it came to fat people she was suddenly a real Puritan. I had heard it so many times: How can she let herself go like that? These people were such losers in Joy's book that they were fair game for mockery, cruel remarks right to their face.
On the top shelf, the bag from Wendy's containing the double stack cheeseburger and french fries that Joey had stuck in here after taking one bite and a few fries. I stuck the whole bag in the microwave and zapped it for 50 second. Old reheated french fries are pretty awful, but my my, how soggy and greasy and fatty they were! I lifted a bunch of them in my fingers and dropped them into my upturned mouth- Oh yeah! Supersize me baby!
How much weight I could pack onto to this petite frame in the next couple of weeks? Even merely doubling my caloric intake---and standing the Food Pyramid on its head---should soon make it fairly obvious. Especially if I wore tight fitting clothes, pushed my belly out, playing it like a bongo drum!
I tore into the soggy burger, snickering at how absolutely FURIOUS he was going to be when he noticed I was putting on weight! I could think of a 100 reasons why intentionally overeating was a REALLY BAD IDEA; but dammit, it would work! He would be mortified, and I'd have exactly the sort of leverage I needed, a sly smile crossing my pudged-out face, 'I'll quit if you will, Brother Dear!'
And anyway it wasn't my own flesh I would be harming. It wasn't like we'd be staying in each other's bodies. I finished the burger and fries then went looking desert. Ah of course- Chunky Monkey ice cream!
Payback is a bitch, and so am I.
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TO BE CONTINUED...
(A bit out of sequence this time,
with Chapter 10 telling about the middle part of this same day)
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AUTHOR'S RAMBLINGS (optional):
I find it a bit unsettlinging when women refer to themselves as bitches, in the way that Teddi did at the close of this chapter, thinking: "My God, is that the only kind of female empowerment you can conceive of? How could being a bitch (or a bastard) be a good thing?" I used it here to show that Teddi isn't thinking too good. When I got to the part of writing her thoughts leading up to her decision, the real start of this grotesquely absurd war with Joey, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to make it convincing. Teddi is far more self-aware than the character I'd originally conceived of. I was surprised how I was almost able to make this descent into madness sound almost logical. Now the trick will be to keep her from coming to her senses, or everytime she does Joey gets another tattoo or something. And how do I keep her likeable (I do hope you find her likeable...) as she succumbs to her Italian vendetta genes. Should be innaresting...
The dog terrified of the toy Teletubby is a true story, only it's the blue one she lives in dread of, not the pink one. Poor Isaboo! One of the incomprehensible phrases that issues from the plushy idiot thing sounds like: "I got a gun! I got a gun!"
Josepho's fugue episode was based on two events from my life. Talking to my dying mother (congestive heart failure) in the hospital in 1998 for ten minutes before I realized that she was faking knowing who the heck I was (I seemed to know her, so she was going along...); And also my father's mental disintigration from brain cancer a few years later as my sister and I home hospiced him, which increasing came to resembled some Mad Hatter's Tea Party (was he trying to make a ham sandwich using the coffee maker, or a cup of coffee out of ham and cheese?). Heartbreaking, terrifying in its illogic, and yet at times grotesquely hilarious. This chapter is sort of dedicated to my parents, who never got to know their younger daughter…
I sat on the park bench crying my eyes out, stunned by the unreal encounter I'd had with my hospitalized father. In just one day he had gotten so much worse...
A dozen or so ducks had wandered up from the pond to come check me out. Quacking, shaking their little tails, unafraid, so darn cute. Now the ducks were making me cry.
"Sorry babies, I got nothin' for you!" I sniffed as I rummaged through my purse, hoping that somehow a bag of Duck Chow I hadn't realized I was carrying might appear in there.
Suddenly a flock of Canada geese---thinking my little friends were on to a handout---ran in and chased them all away.
"Oh," I gasped, "OH!"
And now the geese were in front of me instead, acting like I was supposed to recognize them as the more rightful recipients of whatever treats I had. I knew their type. Thugs. Schoolyard bullies. The alpha male reared his head, scornfully staring me down...
"Oh yeah?" I jeered, "I wouldn't give you nothin' even if I had it, you stupid goose. Damn right I'm talkin' to you! We're the only ones here, who else would I be talking to? Think your so bad don'tcha? Beating up on a these poor little ducks. Why don't you try picking on somebody your own size. Come on tough guy, right now! You and me!"
When from out of nowhere came a woman's voice: "Joy?"
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[NOTE: THE EVENTS OF PART 10 DON'T TAKE PLACE AFTER THE CONCLUSION OF PART 9 BUT RIGHT ABOUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT SAME DAY. TO ME IT JUST WORKS BETTER THIS WAY...]
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||| THURSDAY OCTOBER 9 ~~~
After I saw my father this morning (but he didn't see me) I went to the park to cry.
Or it wasn't really anything so planned, I hadn't left the hospital with coming here in mind but had noticed this spacious expanse of green lawn sloping down away from me on my right at about the same time as I was realizing that I could hardly see, and shouldn't be driving. I found an entrance, the little road leading in toward the park's east parking lot, and pulled into one of the hundred or so slots in the herringbone array of white stripes. This being a weekday there were only five other cars here. Probably retirees or the unemployed, trying to catch whatever sorry type of fish dwelled in the park's four little lakes.
I found this table under a tree, on a little rise overlooking the smallest pond, and just let go. It was nice here. Much nicer than crying at the hospital. There was a tiny bit of a breeze, which took the edge off the unseasonable heat, and with no one less than a couple hundred feet away in any direction I had some privacy.
It was nothing new for me to be crying after a visit with my father, but there was something different about it today. Unlike those times when my tears had been brought about by Papa's cruelty, and that whole comedy of errors that surrounded my inhabiting Joy's body and posing as her, I wasn't crying in reaction to him so much as for him. It was more primal somehow, with a huge element of raw fear. The issues behind this were clearer, not dragging me into that morass of "what should I do?" About this there was nothing you could do!
I didn't want my daddy to die, or to become unreachably crazy. Much better for him to be unreachable by choice---hating me even---than to disappear into the black hole of dementia.
I supposed I could pray for him, but this hardly seemed like doing anything. People got sick, people died. Period. God might have "a plan for each of us", but over the long anonymous trudge of history it seemed like he has used most of us for fertilizer. Mama had been cut down, not even fifty yet, and now this. How utterly fucking helpless we all are eventually. Prisoners within our failing bodies, our dimming minds...
Like a tongue probing at an inflamed tooth I kept returning to dismal thoughts like these, knowing they would bring more tears.
A dozen or so ducks had wandered up from the pond to come check me out. Quacking, shaking their little tails, unafraid, maybe even a bit smug, but in a way that I found endearing. Their faces, the lines of their beaks and their whimsical vocalizations always made me think of ducks as happy little souls, when they might actually be no happier than a flock of blank-eyed pigeons. Now the ducks were making me cry...
"Sorry babies, I got nothin' for you!" I sniffed, wishing like hell I did. Feeding them would be just what I needed right now, a real balm to my soul. I went rummaging through my purse, hoping that somehow a bag of Duck Chow I didn't realize I was carrying might appear in there. I could tell the ducks were hoping so too.
Suddenly a flock of Canada geese---thinking my little friends were on to a handout---ran in and chased all the cute ducks away.
"Oh!" I gasped, "Oh!"
And now the geese were in front of me instead, acting like I was supposed to recognize them as the more rightful recipients of whatever treats I had. I knew their type. Thugs. Schoolyard bullies...
"Get out of here you stupid geese! Don't! Leave her alone! Hey! HEY!" I shouted, clapping my hands at this big male who was thumping on a terrified little brown hen with his beak until she managed to break away. The bull turned and reared his head, scornfully staring me down.
"Oh yeah?" I jeered, "I wouldn't give you nothin' even if I had it, you asshole. You heard me, you're an asshole! Stupid asshole goose. You're damn right I'm talkin' to you, who else would I be talking to? Think your so bad don't you, beating up on a bunch of poor little ducks? You're four times their size! You wanna try me? We'll see how tough you are. Come on tough guy! You and me!"
When from out of nowhere came a voice. "Joy?"
I yelled and jumped. The geese all scattered.
"Oh crap, you scared me!" I barked hoarsely, turning to see a tall redhead poised behind a baby stroller.
"Sorry Clyde," grinned my old friend. It was Jennifer Thurston, the girl that Joey had told me was living back in Princeton, staying with her mom after motherhood had cut short her dreams of being a stand-up comic and actress in New York. I hadn't spoken with her since my last trip back here...
Or no. It hadn't been during that rushed and hectic visit (which had been wholly centered on my mom's funeral...) but my previous one. Nearly a decade ago.
Jennifer's hair was shorter now and she'd dyed it red. Or it had always been red, but now it was this deliberately fake plastic-looking red, cut into a sort of mullet. Short on the sides, poufy on the top, like David Bowie on the cover of Aladdin Sane only minus the lightning bolt. And some---remembering the rich tones of her natural hair---might mourn such a radical step, but I thought it looked cool. The way it complimented or even flaunted her pouty-lipped androgynous beauty, which people often compared to rock legend Jim Morrison. This hairdo might have gone better with some equally flamboyant attire (a sleazy gold lamé caftan, a Barbarella-style space vixen's outfit...) than these casually funky clothes she had on, but Jennifer was on her own time here---taking her baby to the park---and not opening for the Dresden Dolls at CBGB's...
"Where'd you come from Jenny? You snuck up on me like a ninja!"
"Not really. You were preoccupied," she said with an impish smirk. She pointed to one of the packed dirt trails that meandered through the patchwork of grassy spaces and groves of trees, the maze of ponds and streams and graffitti'd little concrete bridges. "I was taking Edgar for a walk, when I saw you up here. Or I thought it was you anyway."
She looked down into the stroller and began joggling it by its handlebars. A tiny baby peered out at me with the sleepy befuddled eyes of a three-month-old before the rocking made his head tilt and his eyes close. His fair skin was velvety soft, as yet unmarked by the world he had so recently entered. In those tiny bright yellow overalls he was just adorable.
Jennifer smiled at the way I was looking him, glad that I didn't find her baby ugly. She said, "So Joy, what are you doing here clear across town? I mean besides fighting with geese. This is quite a ways on the bus."
My nemesis was still glaring back at me as they waddled away, as if to say that if this other human hadn't shown up to unbalance the odds he would've totally kicked my ass. Not even sure where to start describing this weird day I was having, I shrugged, "I was just, uh..."
"Not that I blame you. Those honkers can sure be obnoxious sometimes. So what were you trying to feed the ducks?"
"I wasn't," I admitted, "I was just checking. I thought I might have a couple of packets of crackers in here. This park, well it's near the hospital. My dad's in there."
"Yeah, your brother mentioned something about that."
"Really? So you've seen him?"
"No, he came by a few days ago and I wasn't there. He talked to my mom, and she fed him a couple of sandwiches while he wrote me this bizarre note."
"Bizarre?" I asked, imagining a half-dozen embarrassing things this might mean.
"Well for one thing his handwriting was really different. Used to be neat, like an engineer or somebody would have. Now it was in cursive and I could barely read it. It said some stuff about your father. Pretty bitter for Teddy, almost like your pops was getting what he deserved. And here I thought those two were getting along better."
"Papa hasn't been the best of patients. It's pretty aggravating visiting him when all he does is dump on you. Even Grandma Rosa's getting fed up with him."
"Oh, okay. But mostly it was all this, uh-" she laughed uneasily, "Saying how he knew he never used to be cool, and knew what a big dork he used to be, but now he was a lot cooler, and I'd be amazed at how much cooler and more fun he was!"
"You know my brother! He was kidding around, obviously. Like your 'Mr. Smooth' character..."
"If he was it was a pretty dry. More creepy than funny. But I sure hope he was, I'd hate for him to show up all 'Hey Baby' like that, with his shirt unbuttoned and a gold figa hanging around his neck. I liked Teddy just fine the way he was. But you know how tight we were! As much as I am with you, but in a different way."
"Tighter, it seems like."
She nodded. I'd said it, not her. "Well we did have a lot in common, being more on the, uh- the nerdy end of the spectrum than the kids you ran with. It's a shame me and him never managed to stay in touch..."
Seeing my friend again had already brightened up my day. She was brilliant, funny and just super fun to hang around with. And wow, did she love to talk! Back in high school we seemed to get a lot of the same classes; our study sessions at her house or mine turning into these epic gabfests that would only break up when a bleary eyed parent came in to announce that it was past midnight, and we were keeping them up, and who the hell cares about the Teapot Dome Scandal?
I was suddenly reminded of just how much I'd missed this girl. A woman now, but with all the same little mannerisms and turns of phrase. Her "Jennifer-isms", like calling everyone Clyde, (which our teachers used to hate when she did it to them, although there was no malice in this). Why had we dropped so far out of contact? I'd checked out her web site from time to time but never left a comment...
The device she'd been pushing looked liked it was designed to go 90 miles an hour over over the surface of Mars. Expensive bicycle wheels, anodized tubing converging at weird angles to cradle the little rubberized acceleration couch, black accordion-pleated shock absorbers everywhere.
I pointed. "What is that thing?"
"That's a baby."
"I meant the stroller!"
"They're kind of new. You can run with these."
"So you still run?"
"Every day," she said, rocking on her white Nike Trailblazers, that had cute little ruffled socks peeking out from their tops. Like her magnificent tan thighs---which fairly burst from the frayed legs of her cut-off jeans---her calves were nice and buff, though not so muscled up that they were funny looking. And yes I was checking out her legs...
Jenny was one of those lithe, tall hipless basketball player-type girls, the sort that I sometimes felt glimmerings of sexual attraction to, which had made me wonder if I wasn't partly straight after all. The answer turned out to be no, not nearly enough; but she and I had had a modest amount of fun finding this out (she's a great kisser!); and our experiments in this direction hadn't damaged our friendship at all. As she had put it, "Well, we can't say we didn't try..."
And now she had me wondering if Teddi-with-an-I wasn't at least somewhat of a lesbian. Jennifer was proudly bisexual, so a new run of experiments wouldn't be inconceivable. Or at least if I wasn't happily and monogamously engaged...
Even with her recent pregnancy she couldn't have been more than eight pounds heavier than the last time I'd seen her, which wasn't much on her big frame. I said, "You look fantastic!"
"Not completely," she frowned, and flipped up the bottom third of her embroidered white cotton peasant blouse to reveal the deflated little pouch of her tummy. She gazed down at it in disgust, then dropped the curtain on it.
"But that's nothing! Of course you'll have that for a while. And in a way it's beautiful," I told her. Not that I had some stretch-mark fetish, but it didn't repulse me in the least, "I mean you know ....... what it means."
"Yeah," she said quietly. She knew what I meant.
She joggled the stroller some more, both of us watching as Edgar succumbed to sleep again. His thumb was curled inside his dainty little hand like he thought he had something in there. The way his red hair was coming in had given him a prominent tuft at the front almost like his mommy's.
I would have loved to be able to pick him up, but I'd known enough mothers with babies this young to know that when they're sleeping is Mama's time to relax and recharge her batteries. He'd be up and needing every bit of her attention---and then some---soon enough.
"Hey, you want a juice? I've got carrot and I've got pomegranate," she said as she pulled two plastic bottles out of a pouch of rubber webbing on the back of the stroller's seat. I couldn't even remember what pomegranate tasted like so I tried that. It was tart, good.
Jennifer was studying me as we drank. I'd had the residual sniffles all through our conversation, and I knew my face must've been a mess. She indicated the damp wad of tissues that I still had clutched in my hand. "Rough day, huh?"
I slumped my shoulders dramatically, "Rough week! Like I say I've been going to see my father, and he hasn't been too receptive to my coming around. Or maybe you don't need to hear all this. It's pretty messed up!"
"Of course I want to hear it. We're friends, aren't we?"
Her dazzling jade eyes seemed to be looking right into me, and the loving concern in them brought fresh tears to mine. That's how much of a basket case I was today. Just a look could set me off...
I told her about my father's mysterious illness, and how rotten he'd been treating me, giving her some of the choicer examples; which at one point provoked her to call him "Father of the Year". This appellation just oozed with sarcasm; that burning protective anger that wells up in you when you learn of some abuse or injustice someone you love has suffered. Jenny had never much liked Papa, but now she absolutely hated his guts.
But when it came to the matter of WHY my sister had become a nonperson in our father's eyes, I didn't know how much Joy/Joey would want our friend to know. I hesitated.
"The abortion, you mean."
"Oh," I said. She knew.
"Hello? I was there, remember? You coming to stay at my little rat-hole apartment on Mulberry Street? Us talking half the night before I went to that place with you?"
"Oh yeeeeah," I crowed, like some dimwitted cartoon character, "My brains, I think I left 'em back at th' hospital there!"
"He must've really upset you then. What a bastard!"
"That's the thing though, he wasn't one. Or not to his daughter anyway. This wasn't like those other times, him calling me slut and a murderer and all that. This was from way out in left field, just so bizarre, so confusing ....... I'm still confused obviously, to forget how how wonderful you were back in December! So anyway, I went into his room, expecting all his usual invective; but-"
"Invective?!"
"Yeah, you know," I said, a bit baffled by this interruption.
"I know. It just surprised me that you'd put it that way."
"How should I put it?"
"It's not that. It's just ........ well to be honest it's just not a word I'd ever imagine you using."
"Joy's not stupid, you know!" I found myself blurting out. It was the first time in several days I'd screwed up about staying in character.
"No she's not," Jen responded without missing a beat, "Jennifer never said she was. Jennifer likes that Joy is using her whole vocabulary and not playing the tough little dropout for once. But she's troubled by this sudden shift to third person. Could Joy be dissociating?"
"Smart ass!" I giggled. "All right, maybe I am. It was so insane in there. It was ........ well words fail me."
She raised an unkempt eyebrow, "Which is really saying something. Because we've been talking here, and .......... Well like the way you described that fight with your father on Saturday! Like a Reuters war correspondent or somebody might tell it. It's like suddenly you're this whole different, more articulate person. It's nice, but it's kind of weird."
"What can I say? I get articulate when I'm confused."
The illogic of this earned me a Boing. She sent her hand flying out from the side of her head---as if her brains were exploding out of it---and went "BOING!" This was another classic Jennifer-ism, and I laughed as I remembered the way she used to do this; to show that she was baffled by some paradox or absurdity.
"Okay, I guess you do," she grinned. "Say, how's your Grandma doing? I saw her once right after I came home. She was driving past me, but I guess didn't hear me when I hollared. It couldn't have been anyone else, not with that white hair and that bright pink sari she had on. I just love that woman to pieces!"
"Grandma's doing great. And she loves you too. She talks about you. She always said you were 'destined for greatness'."
"Greatness? I don't think so. My glorious show business career is in shambles."
"For now maybe. But her prognostications turn out to be accurate way more often than not."
"Prognostications?"
"For God's sake, Jenny! Are you gonna do this every time I use a word with more than two syllables? It's making me self-conscious! I had a thesaurus for breakfast, all right?"
"Mmmmmm, wordy!" she droned, angling her head back and making an insipid gargling sound, like Homer Simpson after he's eaten something weird. "Okay, I won't do it again. It's just curious is all. You must be hanging out with your brother a lot since you two got here, you're totally acting like him!"
Eventually I managed to finish telling her about today's visit with Papa. She laughed, cringing and shuddering- "That's HORRIBLE!"
We had both been laughing throughout this story, which had become grotesquely comical somehow in the telling (Of all the things he could've flipped out over it had been that strange kid's show!), with those blee-blee-bloo-bloos and all her astute interruptions and another 'BOING!' or two; and somewhere in there I'd begun crying again, laughing and crying at the same time, which Jennifer commended as "multitasking"...
And by the the time I finished I felt much better. Still scared shitless for my father's health and sanity, but feeling a whole lot less morbid and agitated than when I'd been sitting here ready to go Rambo on a bunch of dumb geese.
"Anyway, that's what I've been up to. So how about you Jenny? Besides creating this little sweetie pie here."
"Nothing really. To tell you the truth I haven't been doing anything besides taking care of him. Mostly just dealing with my abject failure as a professional stand-up comic."
"What?! You came home to have your baby. I'd hardly call that failure."
She shook her head, "I was giving up and coming home anyway. This just cinched it."
"What the hell? You're a natural! I've seen what you can do with a crowd."
"Back in school, you mean? I was also a varsity basketball player, but we both know I'd never make it in the pros..."
I started to protest, that she was better than 90% of those jerks you see on Comedy Central, when suddenly the air was filled by a desperate wailing!
"Uh oh! Somebody's up."
Carefully she lifted the infant out of the pilot's seat and clutched him to her, "What's da matter Lil' Eggies? Huh? Oh, you say you just a liddle baby and dunno how ta talk? S'okay, Mommy's gonna figure dis out..."
Edgar wasn't at all appeased by this, but continued shrieking to wake the dead! It was strange how this piercing sound wasn't bothering me in the way it usually did [An intrusion into MY day that you had no right to subject me to; A nasty little first-impulse that I would always chide myself for in the next second, as I remembered that a.) The whole damn world doesn't revolve around me; and that .b) Babies are sort of necessary for the continuation of the human race...]; but rather his helpless cries had filled me instantly with an urgency to solve whatever the problem was and make Baby a happy baby again...
I'd been noticing these feelings in myself before, from just about the first night of this body swap, which could be triggered by the sight of dogs on t.v., a kitty cat sitting in a window, toddlers following their mother around the supermarket. And while I'd always felt a tenderness toward anything small and helpless, what made me think of these impulses as different---as maternal---was the enormous physical component they had to them. A body rush, a sweet ache of desire to hatch something out of me and love it forever. And what was frightening was how freaking powerful these impulses were! Like they might drive me to storm into a sperm bank with a Glock 9 in one hand and a turkey baster in the other: 'ALL RIGHT MOTHERMAKERS! THIS IS A KNOCK UP!'
"It's usually one of a few simple things," said Jennifer. She palpatated the bottom of his Builder Bob overalls and grimaced, "Yeah I thought so..."
I watched as she laid him on his back on the table, whipped a fresh diaper and a pouch of wipes out of a second hidden compartment in the Mars Rover and got to work on Little Eggies, undoing the clasps of his overalls and pulling them down to his ankles, and then all the way off after he started kicking and thrashing. I was spellbound. His little face was all red and shiny from screaming, and I marvelled at his perfect little nose---no bigger than the tip of my pinkie---until she bent forward, obscuring my view of him. Jennifer's own face was a picture of fulfillment and purpose...
"That should be me!" said a voice in my head, that sounded hurt and remorseful and quite jealous of my friend. Not like an actual audible hallucination, but more of a thought that wasn't mine, even though it was clearly in my own mental voice, which had more and more been taking on the pitch and timbre of the female one I heard when I spoke, as opposed to the Teodoro voice I had thought in right after the body swap. These emotional waters I found myself in felt like they were getting too deep and too swift for me. I would need to talk to Grandma about all this, and soon!
Joy's baby would be even littler than this if she'd had it. Just weeks old. Papa had said a grandson, but did anyone even know? What would it be like to be "Joy" for a month with a tiny baby to love and take care of?
Or would this body swap even have happened if she'd showed up at the house with a baby? Would Joy have settled right down and devoted herself to motherhood, as sometimes happens to irresponsible women that nobody thought would ever change? ("Sorry people, the party's over. I've got something much better now...") Or would entrusting my sister with a new life have been a collosal tragedy, the sort of astonishing negligence that you hear about on the news and wish you hadn't?
Or ........ might the swap have prevented a tragedy; as I stepped in and did what needed to be done, assuming what seemed suddenly like the most crucial responsibility and the greatest blessing in the world? If I wasn't a good mother it wouldn't be for want of trying!
But all these flights of conjecture and fantasy were pointless. Nothing could change the fact was that there was no baby, at least this side of Limbo...
Jennifer unvelcroed Edgar's diaper, lifted him by his feet and slid the nasty thing out from under him, looking around for a trash barrel. The nearest was quite some distance away.
"I've got it," I said. Stood up and took it from her.
"You sure? Thanks," she said, and began wiping greenish poo off of his bottom, off his tiny pee-pee and nut sack. "And here, wait for these. You're a better man than I am, Gunga Dinn!"
Edgar was quieting down now, knowing that his problem was being attended to. I held the diaper open for Jen to drop the poopy paper into- "Tenk you, Pukka Sahib!"
.
That should be me, came the thought again.
But I knew I never would be. Ever...
I felt as lonely, barren and meaningless as the surface of the moon...
.
"Thanks Clyde! Boy, aren't you glad you don't have to do this three, five, six times a day," grinned Jenny as she turned toward me. Then she saw my face.
"Oh shit! Oh I am soooooooo sorry! Hey wait! Where you going?"
I was already a good distance from her across the lawn, "Where do you think? I'm throwing this away. And then to the bathrooms there."
"Joy, I-"
"Don't worry about it, it's no big deal. Back in a jiffy."
"Come on Teddy," I told my reflection in the bathroom's cloudy steel mirror as I washed my face, deliberately sticking the 'y' back into my name, "It wasn't your baby! You're not a woman. You weren't MEANT to be a mother! These are just Joy's instincts or something you're feeling. Like maybe this body's in mourning for the life it had growing in it..."
"Okay, it's all yours," I said to the woman who had started to enter the bathroom, then thought better of it when she heard me arguing with myself about my gender, like Steve Martin in All of Me...
I headed back, determined that this reunion with my good friend wouldn't keep being so damn focused on me and my troubles, my wingnut emotions. I would steer this conversation toward safer topics. Reopen our argument about whether prions are living organisms...
But as soon as was within earshot Jennifer started apologizing again, "Oh Thank God you didn't split! Damn it, I just wasn't thinking! To say that after-"
"Jesus, Jenny! I don't see what you're getting all freaked out about, or what you thought you said wrong!"
"And I know this is probably the last thing you need to see, but he's got to eat, and well they start to hurt if I don't get the milk out of them."
The top part of her blouse's front had buttons and opened just enough for her to slip her breast out, the fabric's taut edge holding it up like a little shelf as little Edgar---nestled in the crook of her arm---sucked contendedly.
To show her this didn't bother me, I sat down real close to her, leaning my elbow back on the table, casual as you please. "I know that, okay? And like I say but you don't seem to be hearing- it's FINE!"
"I saw that look on your face. That was pain, and it went deep! So don't try and tell me you're fine."
"I made my choice, didn't I? It'd be kind of pointless to have second thoughts about it now."
"Come on, Joy! You've been so honest with me today, don't go back into that cool little shell of yours. It was stupid of me to say that! It's just ........ the way you were talking the last time I saw you, going on and on about a relief it was, joking about it even on the way back to my place; well damn it I should've seen that you were trying too hard! Trying to tell yourself you were okay about the abortion when you weren't at all! And that's why you took off on me, isn't it? You knew I was planning to have my baby, and it must have really-"
"PLEASE! QUIT TREATING ME LIKE I'M FRAGILE!!"
"But you are fragile," she said softly, "You're an emotional wreck."
This was like that other sort of conversation we used to have as teens, not nearly as frequent but no doubt even more vital to our friendship; the ones that began with "What's wrong?" and "Nothing!" and ended with a long and much-needed hug. I should honor our history of honesty and mutual support by being as honest as I could within this mad tangle of truth and fabrication...
"You're right. Maybe I am. It's not every day my Papa turns into a raving loony tune and starts screaming 'Gooble Gobble Goo!!'"
"But it's more than that, or anything to do with him. It's obvious you've been going through some real changes. And what's weird is---'emotional wreck' or not---in some ways you seem stronger than I've ever seen you. Like what did you do after what happened at the hospital? You came here ......... you cried ........... you talked to me. You didn't-"
"Go score drugs?"
"Exactly! How long has it been?"
"It's been a week," I said.
"I knew you were clean," she gushed, "And that explains why you're so different! I love the way you're starting to face things now. Already you seem a lot more comfortable in your own skin."
"Not always Jennifer!" I laughed, sounding a bit insane.
"Of course not. You're feeling it when things that happens to you, probably for the first time in years. But you don't seem driven by all that stuff that was driving you before. All suspicious, and with that big old chip on your shoulder, and just plain mean sometimes!"
"Ouch!" I winced. "And so how do you like this new sober, honest, and more articulate me?"
"Are you kidding?! Let me tell you, baby girl, I've been praying for something like this. Literally, on-my-knees praying! You were so lost! I was worried sick about how you'd end up. But I couldn't even tell you that, because of the way you copped resentments over nothing, let alone anyone telling you that you might want to get help..."
"Sorry if I was kind of a bitch."
She rolled her eyes heavenward, "Kind of? Kind of?! There were times I just wanted to punch your lights out! But now, seeing you like this- Wait a minute!"
Baby Edgar had suddenly pulled his head away from her nipple, and from out of his mouth came a spurt of sudsy milk. Jennifer wiped his chin with a napkin.
"Looks like he's topped off there."
"Maybe," she said and moved him in toward her boob, "You want s'more, huh?"
He turned his head to the side, the intense rejection on his face reminding me of how my father had been acting for so much of this week.
"Okee-day! We done, done, done!" she said, bouncing him up and down in the air briefly, then held him out to me, "Here, take him a second."
"Oh no!" I yelped, knowing I might start blubbering again if I held him.
"Don't worry, he doesn't bite! And if he does he'll just gum you to death. You've gotta- yeah, like that! Support his head," she said, for somewhere in there I had reached out and received him, as I realized this was something she'd needed me to do for her right now.
"There's lots of things I've learned to do one handed, carrying him around, but this isn't one of them," she said as she slipped her breast back inside her top, then twisted and writhed as she pulled her sports bra back into place.
Sweet Edgar was lying across my shoulder while I cradled his back and rump, clinging to me with his delicate little arms. He was warm and smelled like baby powder.
"You two look good together. Who's that Eggies? Is that Auntie Joy?"
And that did it. Jenny tsk'd faintly at my cloudburst of tears, "Oh Honey..."
"I'm sorry!" I bawled, "Here, take him back."
"Just hold him. I want him to get to know his Aunt Joy."
"But he might think he made me cry."
This cracked her up, "Don't worry you're not going to traumatize him, put him on a lifelong guilt trip. If he can put up with my post-partum depression, this should be a walk in the park for him. Believe me, he lets you know when he isn't happy!"
Holding this baby was about the most bittersweet thing I'd ever experienced. The weight of him in my arms, the way he seemed to fit right there. Completing me somehow, like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle. I freed a hand and dragged the back of it across my eyes, then the tissue Jennifer gave me.
"Listen Joy, I never went through what you did, so I can't say I know what it's like. But there's one thing I do know. Your life's not over. You're only thirty-one! And you didn't go get that tubal ligation you were talking about, did you?"
"I don't know," I started to mutter, then remembered Joey warning me not to get this body pregnant. "I mean no. I didn't."
"Well there you go! So that wasn't your last chance ever to be a mom. You're gonna meet somebody. Somebody nice. People will be liking you a lot better now. And guys, well just don't go looking in those same nasty bars. Or at the U.N.," she added wryly, which must have had something to with Edgar's father.
It was nice to have the vote of confidence, but factors known only to me and my brother and a few witches meant that holding Edgar here was going to be as close as I'd ever get. So I'd better make the most of this, I thought, and I held him up in front of my face, talking saccharin gibberish at him.
He responded by grabbing my nose and letting out a happy squeal.
"I think he likes me!" I groaned, and tried to hand him back to her.
"Of course he does. And he's gonna learn to love you. You'll be around, won't you? And come see us?"
"Here take him," I pleaded.
"You have to promise you'll come by," she said crossing her arms. The Chinese baby torture...
Joey had Joy's old high school friends, it would be great to have someone besides Grandma in my life. And how could I stay away from Edgar? "I will Jennifer, I swear! I don't know if I'll be in town after October, so I'll see you a lot when I can. You might even start to get sick of me..."
"Puh-shaw!" she responded, not a sputtering noise but two distinct flat nasal syllables, and finally held out her arms for him.
My hands didn't quite obey my order to relenquish him to her on the first attempt. I had to hold him to me one last time, a goodbye hug. Jennifer grinned at me knowingly. Girl, you got it bad!
She lowered him through the roll bars and into the Mars Explorer, "All right, we should finish our walk. It doesn't look like six miles, but if you hit every trail it is..."
I glanced at the elegant little wristwatch I'd bought yesterday, surprised to see that it was after 3:00 already. "And I should be getting home too. Say, do you think you'd want to go to lunch with me and Grandma one of these days? She'd love to see you."
"Oh definitely! But when would depend on his Highness here, and when it'd be good for my mom to watch him. You know, she's coming here to get me when she gets off work at four. You don't have to take the bus home..."
I begged off, saying vaguely that I'd made provisions. Jennifer pulled her cell phone out of yet another of the stroller's hidden compartments, but when she went to enter my number into its memory found that the battery was depleted. I pulled a tablet and a stick pen out of my purse and jotted down my number, adding our address for good measure, tore it off and handed it to her, then wrote down her info.
"Wow! Even your handwriting seems like it's improved," she exclaimed as she glanced at it, then pocketed it and gave me her number and internet addy at g-mail, and opened her arms for a hug, "All right then..."
We embraced, and she took the opportunity to swat my ass, "Don't you run off on me again!"
"I won't, I swear! God, I've been such a shit," I sighed. The spank didn't excite me (I don't have any of stuff that in me that I'm aware of...) but the tight hug did somewhat, as did the way she dropped her head and pressed her forehead to mine.
She whispered, "I'm so glad I didn't give up on you like everyb- Like people do."
"Who told you to give up on me?"
"You don't want to know," she said, then told me anyway. "Everybody, Joy. Everybody ....... But they haven't known you as long as I have. They don't remember you from when you were fifteen and fun and full of life."
"Some pretty idiotic fun," I muttered, remembering Joy's shoplifting, the hit on Mrs. Pirelli's manger scene...
Her eyes were these immense green things peering into mine, "Maybe when you were showing off for your juvenile delinquent friends, Gordy and them. But you didn't act like that around me. Remember? Or when your Grandma used to take me and you and Teddy on those crazy field trips of hers. That's the Joy I remembered, and still saw somewhere under all the baloney. Or that night before we went to the clinic, the way we talked. So when people kept telling me you were bad news, I knew they were right in one sense, but..."
This pretending to be Joy was so fucked up! What would happen in November, when Joy was Joy again? Maybe I shouldn't be giving her all this hope. I knew what it was like to start having hopes for Joy/Joey, only to have them dashed...
"But those people are right!" I warned her, "I AM bad news! And I could revert back to my old self at any time! Today, next week, next month-"
"I don't believe that," she purred, "You're talking like your serum's gonna wear off and you'll turn back into Mr. Hyde, which is backwards anyway. I think it already did wear off, and this is the real Joy."
"But it's not!"
"Shoosh," she said, rocking me gently from side to side. Her lean muscular body was warm against mine.
Maybe I should do something despicable so she won't be so disappointed later. Insult her ugly retarded bastard baby, or start screaming "Get your fucking hands off me, you big dyke!"
Except I seemed to like this big dyke's hands right where they were. And I must have telegraphed something...
She kissed me on the lips, slow and sweet. It was more loving than passionate, but when my response blossomed into a horny need, her lips grew more aggressive, deciding Okay, sure. We like doing this too. We can do this!
I fought my way out of her grasp and turned away, hand on my throat and breathing hard.
"Oh shit I'm sorry!" she said, wondering how she could have misread the situation so completely, "I just- It seemed like you wanted me to."
"I did! You didn't do anything wrong."
"But I knew you were straight. I shouldn't have done that!"
"I am. Or mostly, I think ....... But today I've been finding myself attracted to you. And I didn't panic just now because we were kissing. The uptight little straight girl, loving it until she went- 'Wait a minute! If I like this I'll be a LESBIAN! Oh God, anything but that!!'"
Jennifer laughed. She and I had discussed this syndrome, and how trying to get involved with self-avowed straight people tended to be more trouble than it was worth...
"So this wasn't that," I said, "But that there's someone I'm pretty serious about. A guy."
"And you didn't tell me? Joy that's WONDERFUL! Who is it?"
"Nobody you know."
"So it's serious? And he's a good guy?"
"It is, he is! Not my usual type at all. So when we started kissing ...... Well I wouldn't want him to be kissing anyone right now!"
"That's fantastic. He sounds like a real catch. But don't beat yourself up over that. You're in a real discombobulated space, and really it was just a kiss. 'For old time's sake', you could call it, even though it was just that one time. Remember the movie we rented that night, Rubyfruit Jungle? I should've known something was up when you wanted to watch it twice. And then how you just happened to need a back massage ........ You Farraninos, I swear," she laughed in good-natured defeat, "Oh well. We can't say we never tried..."
She grabbed the handles of the stroller, "All right. See you soon, I love you!"
"I love you Jen Jen! And bye-bye Little Eggies," I said, waggling my fingers at Edgar.
He flapped his arms wildly, but I don't think it was in response to me. He was eager to get moving.
Jennifer turned, "You know, I'm kind of surprised you never asked me who the daddy was."
I had been wondering about this, but was afraid that it might be one of those things that 'I' already knew about. I said, "I didn't know if it was something you wanted to talk about.."
"And tactful too! Jesus Clyde, this really is a new you! I do actually, but we shall speak of this anon."
"And on and on and on," I said as Jenny took off at a trot, pushing the stroller over the lumpy grass. I sat back down, deciding to wait until she was a ways down the hill before I went to my truck. Hard to explain why the new super-responsible Joy was driving around without a license.
I stared at a dandelion, wondering how long it would survive before the big lawnmowers got it. Thought about my father. About Jenny, about Joey, about babies ........ Maybe Ricky and I could adopt. Not in the state where we lived now, but if we moved to Vermont or someplace. He and I had discussed it once, as a crazy improbable fantasy that we both agreed would be wonderful...
When I glanced up Jennifer had stopped down on the red dirt trail, and was staring intently at the scrap of paper I'd put my address and phone number on.
And then I realized why. There in her hand, with its crossed Z's and 7's, was a small but perfect sample of Teodoro Farranino's handwriting.
.
To be continued . . .
.
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?
.
||| FRIDAY OCT 10 2008 ~~~
.
“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?"
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.
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.
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!”
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...”
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.
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.
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.”
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!”
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 . . .