The past couple months have been the toughest in my life, I think. If you look at a lot of the folks who post here, it's mostly folks like I was when I first came here twenty years ago: Not competely unattached and ready to start a new life, but mostly single and young and arriving with at least some of the really important people in their lives. It's not quite an adventure, but you can sort of deal, and maybe discover that you're not necessarily losing the important parts of what makes you yourself. When I opened that suitcase and saw that I was not going to be Millie's mother, or Ray's wife... That was something being ripped away from me like nothing I had experienced my previous three times at the Inn.
And I'm not doing well. I had a lot of sleepless nights as Millie when I didn't know where the real thing was, but the past two have been borderline panic attacks. I'm not sure why - a lot of this is things I've dealt with before and I know Millie is okay - but I've been ripped out of a life I've built, pushed back into one that in a certain way should feel right, but doesn't. It wasn't like that for me before.
The morning I woke up as Arthur for the first time in almost twenty years, I knew right away, because it's a hell of a thing to go from an energetic 14-year-old to almost 50 and not exactly athletic. Germy has not exactly spent the past couple decades in the gym - though maybe I wouldn't have if I hadn't inherited a former professional athlete's body and had it feel relatively natural - and I found myself pushing up from the bed rather than springing to my feet. Something in my knee felt a little off as I felt the need to pee more than usual. I sat, chuckled at that, and then cursed myself as my aim was momentarily off. At least it didn't look like Germy was fleeing some sort of venereal disease.
I texted Ray and Millie, who said they'd bring donuts and coffee. I sat at a patio and waited for them to show up, waving when they did. They weren't quite wary as they approached, but hugging was awkward, not so much because I'm a guy, but because I evidently register as a stranger. We didn't say anything until Millie asked if this was the real me.
I could have said she was one to talk at the moment, but it was hardly a moment for jokes. "It's where I started from. Or at least, that's in here, under twenty years of time and maybe not hitting the gym as often as I did. I'm still your mom. I'll always be that, no matter what I look like or..."
I couldn't get it out, but Ray did. "Or where your biology pulls you."
"Yeah." I looked in Ray's eyes and felt the same attraction I had been fighting while I was Millie. Maybe I was bisexual and hadn't ever had to even consider it twenty years ago, or maybe it was just inertia. "Think you'd be up for trying, if I could stick around?"
He looked down, kind of ashamed. "I... I don't know. I'd like to say I would, but we'd probably be roommates within a month, and then..."
Millie, for her part, didn't seem to have any issues with us both being guys now, but she picked up on what I said right away. "What do you mean, if you could stick around?"
So it was time to tell her about Lonnie.
Leonardo "Lonnie" ----- is six. Through no fault of his own, Germy, aka Arthur Milligan, is his father, and his mother recently died, the details of which are not important beyond that fact that she apparently got to know Germy well enough to know that she had wanted him to have nothing to do with their son. Unfortunately, the grandmother has Parkinson's Disease, and there was really no choice but to assign custody to the father. Germy dodged it for as long as he could, and that was apparently long enough to use the Inn as an escape hatch a second time.
Harmon, I imagine, didn't take a lot of convincing; being Penny seems to suit her just fine, more than becoming some random person, which could potentially even mean returning to her original life, as I gather nobody has settled down in it. For what it's worth, she sent a resignation letter to the school district and hasn't returned to Boston since her stay at the Inn; I'm not sure where she is now.
I related all that to Millie, and she didn't like it when I said, no, it wasn't fair, but this kid didn't have anybody else, and I didn't know if I could live with myself if this boy wound up in the care of someone not prepared to be a good parent, or even someone who might hurt him. She lashed out, saying that it was because he was my real kid. I said that was absolutely not the case, and Ray was quick to jump in and defend me, pointing out that this past year was not something you do for someone you considered anything less than your child, especially considering...
I cut him off there, which naturally led to "especially considering what?" and we recovered in time to say that this was the kind of thinking that got this whole mess started. We followed it up by affirming that we understood why she went out looking on her own and were mostly past her staying radio silent, and we honestly are, but part of going through something like this was making sure that it doesn't happen again.
Which is all true. But we also didn't want her to feel responsible for the extra-special fucked-up bit.
Because that good-looking 19-year-old kid that I thought Harmon had become? Not random. It's Jeremy Boyd's biological son, the one Nell said was her reason for staying Jeremy way back when I first became her. It seems like in the intervening years, (s)he and Daisy had parted, so when Daisy "won a contest" for a vacation back East, Nell/Jeremy didn't realize where they were going, and only felt a little unnerved when they came back late, because even we aren't exactly immune to whatever makes people accept "anything but a cursed inn" as an explanation. To say he's pissed is an understatement.
And maybe that's why I've been so depressed. Lonnie is a great little kid, and I've got to work extra hard being a good father to him because Germy has obviously given Grandma Della good reason to be suspicious of me, which means I can't uproot him from the Bay Area and go to Boston right away, so I'm trying to mend things with Millie long-distance. It's hard, even though she's really feeling my absence now that she's herself again and back in her old room and school and is really trying to make sure I stay a part of her life and also being there for Ray, which is more than a girl her age should have to do. It's just...
Well, it's just that every parent I know has said that they'd give up everything for their kids, and in most cases I absolutely believe that's true. Actually doing it is a hell of a thing, though, harder than you can imagine, even if something in the back of your head keeps trying to tell you that this is what you should be (although, fuck "should be" in almost every way). But doing that while realizing that there are folks out there who not only won't, but will literally steal their kids' future... It leads you to despair, and there are times when I'm almost grateful that there's this little boy who needs me, because that responsibility keeps me away from doing anything drastic, which is an unfair burden on him, even if he doesn't know he's carrying it.
-Arthur, Penny, and now Arthur again.
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