Chapter 20 - Twenty Morning High

Morning didn't feel like a revelation. It felt achy and twisted and contorted, like I'd gone to sleep awkwardly, pretzeled up into an unfamiliar shape. My clothes weren't much better. At least the bed didn't feel like a jagged river. Just taking a ginger assessment of everything occupied several sleepy moments as the sun flooded lids I couldn't press together any tighter. Joints cracked noisily in my ankles but one lingered at the edge of relief.

Whimpering through bleary sights and vague smells, I knew this wasn't my bed. Dried skin curled in layers as I moistened my mouth, like swallowing a peeling snake. A cough brought up the thick, gross remains. Fumbling around for a bit of paper or a lot of water, I soon recognized my grandparents' master bedroom. A dense, weighty presence drew me towards the middle of the bed. I had to get up.

With dangling arms, I tumbled quietly to the carpet. Everything felt wrong. The poof of my pajamas was absent, replaced by a banded bowing around my waist and a crushing hoop against my legs. It felt like being wrapped up in a snug rug not meant for me. I was dressed in my cousin's clothes, a skirt and a blouse themed for Halloween. I hadn't changed out of them when putting...

Scrambling, I peered over the top of the mattress. My...oh, my grandparents were...

They needed their regular clothes. And so did I.

But first, I needed to pee like I was doing it for the first time in my life. I barely staggered into the master bath in time, pausing before the toilet and warning myself to check before flinging up the plastic, cushioned seat. I dribbled a little before I settled into my routine. Cracking one chilly finger after another, I felt the heater thunder to life and press some of the cold from my bones as I processed my experiences.

I was Lacy. I had been Lacy. At least as a hallucination. No. It was deeper than that. I knew exactly what it was like to BE Lacy. Maybe. If it was real. Wearing her clothes didn't just happen. Unless something wildly hallucinogenic had been dropped in those bananas and the later candy. I had to take this all rationally and slowly, despite the fact I was wearing my cousin's blouse and skirt and my grandparents had children's clothes dangling off them.

Before anything else, I found something to wear amidst the clothes taken from my house and draped their regular robes over my grandparents' bodies to give them some decency without risking waking them from what looked like peaceful slumber. They were breathing. It hurt me that I had to check, but it had long ago become our habit whenever they were too quiet for too long.

Still cracking my fingers, I wandered the first floor of the house alone as the chill of the night cleared with the early light. My grandparents usually got up early, especially since it was a Tuesday. All Soul's Day. They might do something at their church, even if it was volunteer prep for Thanksgiving coming up. Would they remember? Did I even really remember? And was what I remembered correct?

Checking around in the front room, I saw the game system was put away in a different fashion than usual. The bowl of candy was basically emptied. None of them were even remotely purple. I located the bananas, every single one in the entire house. They were normal. All of them.

Normal to a suspicious degree. I counted them. The numbers added up. I had all the remaining bananas in front of me. Five in the batch I first got and three which I worried about being one short of fixing things. All were a modest but pristine tone of yellow, no longer overripe but short of being freckled with brown.

The effect, seemingly, had worn off at some point. Assuming my grandparents didn't still have the minds of their kids. And assuming that Lacy was alright upstairs. Would she be though?

So many times last night, I got the nagging hint that she didn't want to be Lacy any more than I wanted to be Lacy. No. That was just my own winding speculation. The only way to know was to go up there. I checked in on our grandparents once more and felt assured that they wouldn't spring from their beds with yells and screams.

With a bottle of icy water from the fridge which I'd already half-drained and a fresh one for her, I crept up the stairs carefully. It reminded me of a game we played occasionally, where I did my best to surprise her. Despite my best efforts at stealth, she always seemed to know I was around. So, it was no surprise when I approached the door to her room and her voice asked, "John?" through the crack. Her familiar voice, crackling with morning dryness.

Lacy was nestled deep in the bed with my clothes bunched up around her shoulders and the blankets insulating her from the early chill. She shivered from the water bottle but drained it in one gulp before her teeth started chattering and she wrapped herself up deeper.

"Yeah, it's me", I answered with the listless pace of morning and the uncertainty of whether I was actually truly me after last night. Doubt didn't linger in her as she gave me a long look and proclaimed, "I was you. Wow. And our grandparents were our parents as kids. And my mom was....still is a fucking bitch. And those kids...Are our grandparents okay?"

My kids. Her kids. Lacy's kids. Whatever that meant. Those kids were gone. Our grandparents were back. I was just playing a role, smashed into it by forces I didn't understand. But those kids meant everything to me. And the light around the windows felt hollower to know that it had been little more than an illusion. The emptiness felt real. Like this was a sour dream that I would wake from to realize that they wanted me to get up and make breakfast. I could even be their uncle, if I had to be.

But I put all that aside, for Lacy. I took a full breath of air so I could tell her that our grandparents were resting their experience away and I'd taken care of them. Still clinging to the blankets, Lacy steadied herself and checked the time by her bed before announcing, "I better get them up for their routine. Grandpa needs help in the bath. Assuming everything's alright." Those words followed as a bitter afterthought.

To our mutual relief, our grandparents had some morning strength in them and were animated far faster than I expected. They were nervously aghast about the state of their clothing, begging to know that they didn't embarrass themselves or the neighborhood. Lacy eagerly and repeatedly assured them that it had been a "good" evening.

We soon heard them recount what they could recall. While grandma didn't commit to details at first, just stating, "I felt like a child who...reminded me of our little ones when they were about five or so", grandpa admitted, "I dreamed I was our little Riona, when she was just a scamp."

Lacy let out a modest chuckle as she quipped, "Riona was just a scamp once?"

Grandpa withdrew his fingers and bowed his head. "I'm sorry, sweetie..." But Lacy stopped him.

"Don't worry. Give me all the dirt on her you can. I'm not afraid of her anymore. She's just a sad, pathetic shell of that child, who never learned to be an adult. You'd be a far better Riona than she was, Grandpa Orson."

Grandpa fussed with the conversation like a knot he couldn't quite undo how he wanted or pull any tighter. Eventually, he settled on, "It's just one of those silly dreams. Hopeful, mostly dreams. Wishing she had better Halloweens, wishing we all did. Wishing we spent more of them with you. Awake and not leaving you to fret over us..."

She set an arm firmly on his shoulder and declared, "Grandpa Orson, we all had a lovely Halloween, one of the best. I've never had an experience like last night. You opened our eyes up to our parents through the people they were and they weren't. They're not so big and scary now. It just was a full and tiring night. For everyone. That's all."

Grandma pressed Lacy for reassurance. "Were you both able to take care of the kids? What about the costumes? Oh, such a shame for us to sleep through all their precious little outfits. Did you take any pictures with your phone?"

Lacy managed things with a good deal of calm. She collected her phone and managed to show off a few images that didn't trigger too many questions. I got to see the pictures I took of Ryan's page and the spooky snaps, which didn't seem as weird in the light of day, but I didn't want to linger on them. In fact, I would've been fine if she just tossed them off the cloud.

Grandma did shake her head at the bananas in the kitchen but focused more on whether we had breakfast. Grandpa's fingers still didn't work quite how he wanted, to his sighs of frustration, but he had a better time with the spoon in his oatmeal. Afterward, he ventured out onto the front porch as the haze of the early morning cleared to a weak but enthusiastic warming. It would continue to be a cold day with many colder to follow, along with ice and snow. But this looked like a nice one.

He savored a cup of hot tea as the street slowly puttered to life. Some decorations had already gone down overnight while others looked faded by the sun.

I helped Lacy wash the plates after breakfast as grandma joined grandpa on the chairs on the porch. She dashed the sponge roughly over the plates even though everything easily washed down the sink. After some respectful silence, I asked her, "You okay? Need some help?"

She had on the long, peach-toned gloves from the upstairs bathroom which started all this. With a long breath, she answered briskly, "Yeah. Sure. Dig in."

After scrubbing off the skillet, I clarified, "I mean about last night. You know. Are you okay? Like...what you remember and about what happened."

Lacy's immediate answer was to angrily massage her hands through the gloves till it looked painful, while turning on the most intense blast of steaming hot water. I joined her on the side and eased the tap to a more reasonable temperature before the pipes started knocking.

"Lacy? What is it? Is it because of how...uh...well, grandma mentioned you had troubles with your body?"

She draped her hands over the basin and shook her head. "No. No. I mean it was different and fun being someone else for the night. But...whatever curious thoughts I had...that wasn't what I needed. My body isn't wrong. I'm just the mangled wreckage mom loves to throw against the wall."

Despite being inside her head a few ways, I wasn't certain what she meant. I tried, "Be me. You wanted to be me."

Her breath hitched as she drew it in, as though fighting against the portents of tears. "I've always wanted to be you. I know in my head that you don't have it perfect. We wouldn't gripe at each other as much if you did. But you're still amazing. You told me stories that blew my mind as easily as shedding a long nail. You've made me smile. You're so cool. I've wanted to be like you for so long."

I understood that, especially with the vivid but still dream-like infusion to my brain of Lacy once I told off dad over the phone. At least, I thought I understood it. I'd been in her body and had her mind, along with a version of her who was a mom. But was that version "the most her", as she surmised? We finished the dishes together and stood around the sink.

It took till then for Lacy to find the words to continue. I didn't want to force her to speak them. She resolved, "Being you wasn't what I needed. Being a boy wasn't what I needed. Like how putting on a hero mask on Halloween or on grandpa's stage doesn't make me into a hero."

I had to stop her there. "Lacy? You ARE a hero. It doesn't matter whether you can verbally beat your mom or outsmart her. The you I was realized that. You KNOW that. Winning is not playing her bullshit games. She's the child. You're the adult. You can be whatever you set your mind on."

As I held both of her shoulders, I could tell the real pressure on her was decades of Riona seeping into her body and soul. She peeled off the peach gloves and gently put her arms around me. An echo of feeling said I should've been on the other side of that hug. But I wasn't Lacy and Lacy wasn't me.

She spoke against my shoulder. "You know, I got all those clothes because I thought you might stay like me and I wanted you to have a nice wardrobe. And if you hated being me then you could start over as a different girl and if I messed up being you I could reset too. That's why I had all your clothes. I just...I can talk this shit. I spout the right things. But...why God, why can't I just be better?"

I held her and gently rubbed her shoulder as the tears came. I let her ramble through words as she lamented a dozen silly things she shouldn't have worried about (and I assured her it wasn't worth the worrying).

She landed on, "I just raged and bitched at my mom like usual, while you found the smart way through. You were mature. In the same place, I would break."

I urged, "I was you. In mind and body. You did all those cool things last night. You're going to do so much more in the future. Now I won't have you putting yourself down anymore. We shared a being. We kicked Riona's ass. We made a fun time for our grandparents. We stood up to fear and darkness. Not alone. Together."

She took a deep breath, nodded, and answered, "But we won't always be together. We didn't have that when we were kids. It all sounds good, like anything I can say, but things will go back to how they were before."

I sat her down at the kitchen table and urged, "No. You are not the same person you were a day before and neither am I. But turning that change into something lasting takes effort. It takes work. We both got a vision of things beyond ourselves, shared with each other. No matter who or what caused it, even if it was a vivid dream, it meant something special. There is no difference between what you think of as me being special and you being the best of yourself. What I did, you can do too."

We tussled back and forth with no divinely-inspired resolution or inspiration to set things right and grandma and grandpa were left alone on the porch. Lacy prepared some extra beverages as we joined them.

Grandpa wistfully told stories of the old theater and ideas he never quite got to do. He sat halfway in the morning sun. His mood wandered into a faint assurance for Lacy that the house would be taken care of for her.

She thanked him for that, but also said, "I'm going to take care of myself too. I'll start...I am...going to start college classes next year. Maybe theater. Or costume design. I dunno that part yet. But I want to practice with you both and I have some cool ideas."

The subdued energy fell away and grandpa spoke about a bevy of enthusiastic possibilities. Grandma cozied up close to him and gave her own thoughts. I still had the tiredness of the morning on me, but I was the only one.

I could imagine Lacy in that fantastical realm of my own design, where time was a place that never ended. And a morning could linger for an eternity with the bright joy of beginning and setting out for an adventure.

But morning would pass to noon and onward. Energy would wane and sleep would follow. But we still had that perfect moment on the porch, all of us, together.