When I regathered my composure the next morning after the Clarinet Incident, I decided to write it off as a very one-sided admiration. This wasn’t my first rodeo in Unrequited Land. In fact, I had a season pass. Each new crush, I’d find myself standing there, fast pass in hand, wishing that someone who had zero interest in me would finally open their eyes and see me standing in front of them.
Talking about Unrequited Land with Ashley or Grace was always a dead end because neither of them ever visited. They’d never had a problem finding someone who was interested in them—in fact, once they would break things off with someone they were dating, someone new would come in line and express interest. It was like they sent out a beacon that screamed “I’m incredibly datable,” and I sent out a beacon that screamed, “Look at the two other options right next to me.”
So, there I sat once again, in the front seat of a new friend-zone roller coaster that I wasn’t sure my heart was prepared to handle. This one stung more than others, for some reason. Possibly because this was the first time I actually believed that George was my ticket to the emotional and physical theme park that everyone around me had been able to go to for years. Maybe I was just one of those people meant to ride the roller coaster to the top, peek over at everyone else across the way, but never actually join them.
Fiyero and I snuggled up on the couch, watching an incredibly informative documentary on Lady Gaga, with two slices of peanut butter–banana toast. I snuck Fiyero small chunks of banana with a little bit of peanut butter coating the outside. And I used to tease Ashley that she spoiled him. Geesh, I’d become a softie.
It was still early enough on a Sunday morning that I thought I was in the clear from a Mom drop-in for the next few hours. She worked ridiculous hours at her PR firm, always agreeing to work later than necessary to “make up” for the time she took off to be on Shake the Weight. When she first got back from Shake the Weight, she made the grand declaration that she would use her connections and influence to be an Internet celebrity, vowing never to step back into the “hellhole” that she’d dedicated so many years of her life to. But, after two considerable Instagram sponsorships fell through, Mom had to approach her old boss with her tail between her legs, selling a little piece of her soul on the dotted line.
I wasn’t sure what our interaction would be like when she woke up, anyway. We were still on rocky terms after I confronted her when I got home from George’s last week, and we’d barely spoken since. This wasn’t entirely new for us. We went through our rounds of fights throughout the years with long periods of silence, but it felt more severe without having Ashley here to add more noise back into the house.
“Fiyero?” I asked. He cocked his head to the side, suddenly alert. “Do you … want to go outside?”
He dashed from one end of the living room to the other in his excitement, and I giggled, leading him to the back door. He barreled out into the backyard the second the door opened, grabbing for his favorite blue-and-yellow rope toy to play fetch with. I fought with him to get him to drop the toy, and once I did, he would dash across the yard in preparation for me to throw to him. We played like this for over a half an hour, until my arm felt like it would actually fall off from Fiyero tugging on it so hard. I sank to the ground and let him come over and cover my face in slobbery kisses, knocking me to my back. In these moments, he still believed he was a puppy, but I was intensely aware that he was a fifty-pound poodle monster.
“Oof, I can’t breathe, buddy!” I exclaimed, well, barely managed to vocalize.
The back door opened and he ran to greet the new person who was awake.
“Hey, Mom,” I said.
“Good morning, Savvy,” she said. She kissed Fiyero on the head before wrapping her robe tighter around her. “It’s a little chilly.”
“Not terrible for October,” I said. Indiana had the most unpredictable weather. One day it could be a sweltering ninety-five degrees, and the next it could drop to a brisk fifty degrees without anyone batting an eye.
“Why don’t you come inside?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said, rolling over to hoist myself back up after the attack of the poodle monster. I brushed the grass off that covered my butt and I imagined her watching with radar eyes, zoning in on the fat on my thighs and backside jiggling. I suddenly wished that I had a robe to pull over myself, too.
I wondered if this would be the moment where she defended all her actions and I would apologize to make peace, like always. I wondered if she thought about anything I’d said, or took any of it to heart. I hoped so.
She poured herself a cup of coffee with a touch of vanilla creamer, her one indulgence that she couldn’t seem to shake, and took up her post at the head of the table. I joined her tentatively, still unsure about what move to make in our delicate dance.
“Did you already eat?” she asked.
“Yep,” I replied, hoping she wouldn’t push further.
“What did you have?”
Here we go.
“Peanut butter toast,” I said.
She cringed ever so slightly but didn’t actually say anything. I wonder if Ashley had talked to her lately. Mom always held back when she got a good guilt trip from Ashley.
“Talked to Ashley lately?” I asked.
“Last night,” she said, taking a long sip of coffee. “She’s going to start working on a student film with an upperclassman. Did she tell you all about that?”
No. “Yeah, she told me about that a while ago.”
“And how was this Yael girl? Did you see her when you visited her? Is she a good influence on your sister?” she asked.
“I think she makes her happy,” I said. “I didn’t actually hang out much with them. It was a lot of Savvy-Ashley time.”
“Good. I’m glad you girls got to spend some time together,” she said. She ran her hand through her hair and looked at the clock on our newly installed gas stove. It looked fancy and out of place in our dated kitchen, but Mom’s health coach swore by the benefits of cooking on a gas range, so one was installed right after she left the show.
“What are you doing today?” she asked.
Shocked, I snapped my head back to make direct eye contact with her.
“Nothing really. Why?” I asked.
“Maybe we need some Savvy-Mom time. We could go see that new Zac Efron movie, or go mini-golfing, or go get our nails done like we used to when I’d call you girls out early from school on those Fridays. What do you say?” she asked.
Some of my favorite memories came from those days where Mom let us ditch school for a few hours to hang out with her. I remember signing out of school the last Friday of every month for all of middle school, for “appointments” Mom would write us loose for. The secretary had to think that we had perpetual cavities forming in our mouths the amount of times we went to the dentist those years.
“Sure,” I said. It still seemed too good to be true, like someone had taken up residence in my mom and made her an agreeable person all of a sudden. It was very unnerving. But it sparked a little bit of hope inside my chest that I hadn’t felt in a really long time.
“I’ll look up some movie times, then we can grab lunch and maybe shop around the mall afterward? How does that sound?” she asked.
“It sounds great,” I said, smiling. It sounded like the best plan we’d had in quite some time. “I’ll go get dressed.”
I went back and forth between wearing one of my favorite A-line dresses with bright pink and orange flowers, or going the more comfortable route of jeans and a T-shirt. Then I thought about my hindered ability to sprawl out in the movie theater seat with the dress option and firmly landed on the comfy side of things. Zac Efron would have to accept me for my casual comfort.
When I came back downstairs, Mom was wearing one of her old green dresses that she always used to wear, but this time, with a belt around the waist to define it. I hadn’t seen her pull out anything from her old wardrobe since she came back from the show, and a part of me wondered if she’d ritualistically burned them in an effort to erase her past self.
“I love that dress,” I said. She turned around, tugging on the stretchy fabric.
“It does nothing for my figure,” she said, pulling at the belt tighter.
“But it makes your eyes pop! You seriously look gorgeous,” I said.
“Well, hopefully you won’t see me in this again. I need to drop another fifteen pounds to fit back into my regular clothes,” she said, a shaking hand running through her hair.
That same, angry fire that lit my belly a week ago sparked again, and I thought I might explode all over the room in a fireball of anger. Here she was, looking actually healthy again for the first time in a long time, and wearing one of my favorite dresses that felt like home and normalcy to me, and she wanted to devalue it. To devalue herself.
“But these are your regular clothes,” I said. “That’s the dress you wore to my middle school graduation, and the one you wore to Ashley’s first film screening. You used to be beautiful in it.”
“I never felt beautiful in this dress,” she snapped.
“You were beautiful to me in this dress,” I said.
She was silent for a few moments before grabbing her keys near the front door.
“Are you ready to go?” she asked, not looking back to see if I followed her out the door. I hastily locked up behind her before sliding into the front seat of our family SUV.
This car had never been Mom’s choice. If it would have been up to Mom, we would have gotten a practical minivan or a compact family car that took up less gas—or less space in general. But Dad refused to let his family image ruin his car reputation. So he got us the biggest, flashiest, black SUV that the dealership had available. It used to be his project to get the car detailed and washed once a week, but ever since he left, the SUV had been collecting dirt and scratches without much of a care in the world. I wondered, sometimes, why Mom had kept it for all this time.
We pulled into the familiar parking lot of the Springdale Mall, which was packed with the weekend crowd getting in to see a movie before the matinee was up. We parked farther out than probably was necessary, but Mom always complained about maneuvering in between smaller cars in our beast. I could hardly blame her, since I could barely park Norma the Nissan properly, let alone a honking SUV.
My phone buzzed in my pocket as we parked and my heart flip-flopped. There was a 99.9 percent chance that this was just my phone service provider letting me know that my data plan was almost up for the month after I binged a whole season of Project Runway on my tablet without being connected to WiFi. (Honestly, imagine my horror when I realized that I hadn’t been connected all day.) But the .01 percent chance of this text being from George made my hands shake.
George: A student of mine had to reschedule a lesson for Monday night, so I can’t study. Sorry for the late notice.
Have you ever had all your fears confirmed so fully in one sentence? I stared at the text for a few moments before putting my phone back in my pocket. I’d thoroughly freaked him out, and now his precalc grade could be in jeopardy. What would Mr. Kavach say if he knew I was personally responsible for bringing George’s grade down that week because of my clarinet-induced flirtation?
“Everything okay?” Mom asked, hand resting on the door.
“Peachy!” I said, promptly getting out of the car. Anything to avoid talking about George with my mom. “Let’s go enjoy some Zac Efron man candy.”
“Why do you have to say it like that?” she asked, a tiny smile creeping onto her face. The first smile that I’d seen from her in what felt like a million years.
“Because we’re not paying ten dollars apiece to learn about the innerworkings of fraternity life. We’re here to look unabashedly at Mr. Efron for two hours,” I said.
She shook her head, her smile growing bigger. “Oh, Savannah Lynn.”
We’d almost made it to the door when I heard the typical pitch of someone who had just realized they were going to have to stop and say hello to my mom and probably occupy the next ten minutes of our lives with her chitchat. Our old neighbor, Lois Goodman.
“Kim, is that you?” Lois’s voice screeched from behind us.
Mom stopped dead in her tracks as she forced a smile onto her face before turning toward the always-overly-enthusiastic Lois Goodman.
“Lois! How nice to see you!” she said.
“Well, look at you! Don’t you look wonderful!” she said, motioning for Mom to twirl around. She did so, reluctantly, and I noticed the faintest redness creeping up on her neck and to her face.
“Oh, I watched every episode of the show,” Lois Goodman said. “I can’t believe you just lost to that Dave guy. It’s unfair. It’s a known fact that guys lose weight faster than girls. You’d think they’d consider that by now!”
“I wasn’t on there to win,” Mom said. “I just wanted help making a life change.”
“How has it been keeping up? Do you have a personal trainer here? Are you thinking of becoming one to help people out who were in your situation?” she asked.
I could sense Mom retreating within herself. I’d watched her struggle with the fact that with work, she hadn’t been able to keep the weight off like she thought she could. Because what they were pushing her through on the show, the constant, relentless training that no body is meant to endure, it wasn’t a realistic change. Losing weight that quickly was like pushing a ball underwater, but bodies can’t keep the ball under forever. It will eventually spring back up to its natural, stable weight. And I didn’t know if Mom would ever be ready for her ball to shoot back up from her slipping grasp.
“I’m working out on my own. I have a plan that I developed with my trainer on the show, and I’m keeping up with it,” she said.
Lois Goodman reached out and touched Mom’s arm, and Mom took one step backward. Lois didn’t seem to notice.
“Well, I’m proud of you for all your hard work. I can’t imagine the payoff. And to be single in this new body? You must be having so much fun dating! I’m quite jealous,” she said, giggling.
Mom’s face sunk in even further. She gave Lois Goodman a tight smile before linking her arm through mine, a very uncharacteristic move.
“Well, Savannah and I have a movie to go catch. It was great to chat with you, Lois,” Mom said.
“So lovely, dear! I’d love to chat with you sometime about your workout regimen. I know Cal wants to get us on a solid plan for the New Year. I’ll call you!” she said.
“Sounds good,” Mom said, raising her hand in a final wave before turning us toward the mall.
We got our tickets and sat in the movie theater next to each other for the next two hours without speaking. Not even an effortlessly charming Zac Efron could keep Mom’s attention. She sat through the whole movie in an entirely different world, her eyes glazing over and having no physical reactions to the movie (even when Zac Efron surprised the love interest at the end with a dramatic, romantic gesture that ended in a steamy kiss).
As the credits rolled, I stood up, and she seemed to shake out of whatever state she fell into during the movie. She picked up her purse from in between her feet and started her descent down the stairs.
“So, what did you think of the ending?” I asked.
“Huh?” she asked.
“The ending. Did you like how the movie ended?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” she said. She started to pick up her pace out of the movie theater, and I had to seriously power walk to catch up to her.
“Uh, where to next?” I asked. “Lunch? Nails? Shopping? All of the above?”
“Actually, I just remembered that I need to do something for work. I’m so sorry, Savvy. I think we need to go home,” she said.
All the happiness and hopefulness came crashing down inside of me. Each piece of normalcy and love that Mom had thrown my way today built onto one another like Jenga blocks, and she’d just pulled out the weakest piece, causing it all to crumble in on itself.
I nodded. All was back to New Normal.