Willow fixated on the second hand of the clock in Mrs. McAllister’s classroom as she waited for school to be over. As she waited for pizza night. Waited for her mother to come around the bend of the parent pickup circle in her rattling blue car with its googly eyes stenciled on the front of it. Waited to spend the night swaddled in fun.
When the three-thirty bell rang, Willow shoved her spelling list into the bottom of her backpack, confirmed that her laces were tied on both shoes and fast-walked all the way to Asher’s classroom. She grabbed her brother’s hand and pulled him toward the parent pickup circle. Then Willow exhaled for the first time all day and locked her eyes on the entranceway.
Rosie was typically late to pick up Willow and Asher from school. She never wore a watch and often found herself in a daze somewhere, completely oblivious to the time. But Willow didn’t want to miss one second with her mother, so she rushed to the pickup circle anyway every Tuesday and Thursday after school. Willow noticed that all of the other moms wore jeans, a T-shirt and dark sunglasses. They drove black or white cars that sparkled permanently. They kept their hair in neat ponytails and never got out of the car to say “hi” to their children.
But that wasn’t her mother. Her mother’s car was bright blue and made loud clanking noises. Rosie had named her car Lili Von after her favorite character in Blazing Saddles. The googly eyes that were stenciled just above the headlights always caused side-eye glances from the other mothers too. But that didn’t faze Willow or Asher. They loved that car and they loved those googly eyes.
After only three games of tic-tac-toe, Lili Von appeared around the bend with Prince blasting out the window. Willow saw her mother’s left knee poking out the driver’s seat window. Her wavy brown hair was blowing around excitedly. Her big brown eyes and arched eyebrows were sticking out above her neon pink, thick-framed sunglasses that were resting on the tip of her nose. Lili Von screeched as her mother pulled up to the curb in front of where Willow and Asher were standing. And almost before the car had fully stopped, Rosie jumped out of the front seat to give each of her children separate, tight hugs.
Rosie looked as cool as she always looked in her cutoff jean shorts and long fur coat even though it was a perfectly temperate fall afternoon. She looked as cool as she always looked with her shoes with the holes in them and her polished red nails. She looked as cool as she always looked with her bright red lips.
“I missed you little noodles!” she said with a full-teeth and full-heart smile as she got back behind the wheel. “Hop in, already. It’s pizza night!”
But just before Rosie got back behind the wheel, she snapped her head around and looked back at her daughter. She tilted her head to the side, pulled her sunglasses down farther on her nose and said, “Cool hair, baby.” She said it quickly and honestly, and then drove off, leaving Willow smiling so big in the back seat.
They hadn’t even reached the edge of the school parking lot when Rosie reached for the volume knob and said to her children the thing she always said on the way to pizza night at Lanza Pizza.
“Let’s rock ’n’ roll.”
And when Rosie said that, she meant it in the literal sense. She turned the volume knob so many revolutions to the right that the speakers started throbbing and the floor started vibrating.
Cymbal. Cymbal. Bass. Bass.
Willow recognized the song right away. It was Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” and it was one of Mom and Willow’s favorites.
Rosie, Willow and Asher all sang the lyrics in tandem and whipped their hair around as the music played.
Cymbal. Cymbal. Bass. Bass.
They sang as loudly as they could until they reached their parking spot at Lanza Pizza. Even Willow and Asher could see how Rosie filled with even more life when they arrived there. It was Rosie’s favorite pizza place in town, tucked on a side street with a neon sign that was rare for the suburbs of Virginia. It had orange and yellow plastic booths, an old pinball machine and a deep bucket of half-used crayons.
The moment Willow, Rosie and Asher walked through the door of Lanza Pizza, they simultaneously tilted their noses toward the ceiling and pressed their chests forward as they inhaled the smells of bubbling cheese and hot tomatoes. As Willow and Asher grabbed handfuls of crayons, Rosie bounced straight to the counter and asked for three large cups for fountain soda. And just like every Thursday, John had them waiting already right next to the register. As Willow sat down to put her crayons to use, she saw her mother wink familiarly at John in his sauce-stained apron. And then she saw John wink familiarly back at Rosie as he swirled a freshly floured heap of pizza dough around his thick sausage fingers. Willow couldn’t help but smile at the warmth between near strangers. The ease between opposites. The electricity created when her mother entered a room.
Asher and Willow snatched their large paper cups from Rosie’s hand and dashed to the soda fountain, where they filled their cups with a fizzing mixture of orange, root beer, Sprite and Hawaiian Punch. Rosie met them at the fountain, but filled her cup with nothing but cream soda. It was her favorite drink. And every time she got her big, icy cream soda from the fountain—not the bottle—she poked her straw through the plastic top, took her first gulp and said, “Nothing like a cold fountain cream soda.” She did it so often that it had become tradition for Willow and Asher to say the words right alongside Rosie and then for all to take a big slurp of soda.
While the pizza warmed in the oven, Rosie took a roll of quarters out of her tote bag and handed it to Willow. And then Willow and Asher took turns on the pinball machine, clicking the flippers and encouraging each other on. They cheered when they hit a bonus and booed when their final ball slid between the flippers.
And when they got back to the table, a big slice of hot pizza was waiting on each of their plates. Willow bit into her slice, and then looked back up at Rosie, who had a big gooey piece of cheese hanging from her nostril.
“Mom!” Willow said half laughing, half embarrassed, but not at all surprised. Asher looked up too. He clutched his tummy and laughed so hard at his mother with that cheese in her nose.
“What?” Rosie said in thinly veiled awareness, now barely able to hide her smirk. Asher pointed right at her nose, unable to get a word out between giggles.
“Is my nose running? I did feel a cold coming on,” Rosie said, restoring her poker face.
Now Willow was laughing too.
“It’s a cheese booger! A huge one!” Asher screeched between breathy giggles as he pointed at his mother’s nose.
Asher peeled a piece of cheese from his pizza, still vibrating with laughter, and stuck it in the gap where his front teeth should have been. He shook his head back and forth, the cheese swaying too. “Look! It’s cheese teeth!”
Now Rosie was giggling uncontrollably too.
Rosie looked at Willow with urging eyes. And then Willow peeled a piece of cheese from the gooey pizza and draped it over her right ear. “Cheese earrings!”
Right there, in the middle of Lanza Pizza, Rosie, Asher and Willow were just one big pile of cheese and giggles and love.
For Willow, every time she was with Mom was like having all the pizza and soda and candy and ice cream in the world and never getting a tummy ache.